Drinks and Subtle Things
by FarenMaddox
Summary: Between terrible childhoods and the pressures of fame, being a rockstar isn't that much fun... Except when it is. Fai drinks to cope, Kurogane tries not to, Touya and Yukito husband quietly in the background, Sakura kicks ass, Subaru needs love, Fuuma is stuck in second grade, and Tomoyo hides backstage and wonders how she got here. ROCKSTARS AU. Warnings for sex and drug use.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

_. . . A scar_

_I know I gave it to you months ago_

_I know you're trying to forget_

_But between the drinks and subtle things_

_The holes in my apologies you know_

_I'm trying hard to take it back_

They'd decided together that only Fai and Sakura would sit for the interview. They judged the two of them were the most interesting members. Unless you counted Subaru. They were still trying to keep him out of the public eye and let him recover in peace, and the guy from _Rolling Stone_ had better remember their warning not to ask questions about what had happened to him.

Still, Touya and Yukito came along. They were unobtrusive in jeans and tshirts, their hair unstyled and their backs turned toward the room. Just a couple of guys drinking at the bar, but ready to step in if anything went wrong.

Fai and Sakura joined the reporter at the table.

"Hi, welcome, great to meet you, I'm Robert," the young man said. Fai tried not to judge him for the hipster beard he was sporting. Some people just didn't know any better. "What are you drinking?"

Sakura, who'd been legal for all of three weeks, ordered a Long Island and ignored the fact that Robert seemed impressed that she wasn't impressed. Fai didn't like any of the beers on tap so he asked for a Midnight Cowboy, which he then had to explain to the bartender.

"Great movie," Robert commented when they all sat down. Robert was drinking PBR. Of course he was. He had a neck beard.

"I love old movies," Fai grinned, crossing his long legs in front of himself. This was the beginning of the interview.

They talked about movies for a few minutes, with Robert directing questions at Sakura whenever she perked up over a title she recognized. When she didn't know the film, she settled for waiting until Robert was looking at Fai, then making faces across the room at her older brother. She was careful not to call Robert's attention to them, though. They didn't want to be interviewed. They'd already been the young ones making a name for themselves, once, and they were content to stay out of that part of the game. Leave it to the newbies.

They talked awhile about comic books, which was Sakura's hobby when she could be pried off the drumset for fifteen minutes. Fai could have chipped in there, but he didn't. She deserved the limelight, deserved to be fallen in love with. And they would. They would trip over themselves when they realized she knew which superheroes belonged where, in addition to being a powerfully talented musician. (She was also very pretty, but that went without saying. Just look at her, with those jewel-green eyes and cherry-pink lips.)

Eventually talk turned to more relevant, less comfortable topics.

"You guys have had a big year. A really, really big year," Robert said, having switched to Long Island iced tea himself after remembering why Pabst was a bad idea. Fai had hurried his way through the bourbon and decided this painful interview in this muggy, sticky town called for mojitos. Sakura was still working on her first drink.

"I guess we have," Fai said pleasantly, letting out a lilting laugh.

"I mean, you guys have been nominated for awards, you're all over the internet, your concerts have been sold out all summer, your song was in the top ten for seven weeks. Tell me how it feels."

The better question was how it felt to go through this inane process that had Robert just as apathetic as they were. They could have done this over the phone. Although then he wouldn't get drinks on the company dime.

"Damn good," Fai laughed. He nudged Sakura, letting her know they could open up a little and be honest. They had an adoring public, after all. "You have no idea how grateful we are for the support." Totally true.

"I've been blown away by the fans," Sakura admitted, a nervous habit causing her to scrub her hand through the hair at the back of her neck. She'd put enough gel in the faux hawk that it was left undamaged. "When we were getting started, all the advice we were given said that a rock band would never make it with a female drummer."

"It's out of the ordinary, but you guys have definitely made it. Sakura, anything you'd like to say to the doubters?"

She grinned easily. "I already did. I said, 'Bring it on.' I think the sold-out shows speak for themselves, at this point."

Robert laughed along with them. "Still, you guys must have faced some challenges, especially trying to sell Sakura's talent. Any particular incident stand out in your mind?"

"Our third gig," Fai said immediately, causing Sakura to scowl with remembrance. Fai told most of the story, but he gave Sakura the finale in which she'd grabbed a guy by his junk and informed him with nothing but sweetness that drumming had given her very strong hands and she might be able to castrate him. Robert was wide-eyed with delight at having a tough-but-sweet girl he could write about, and Fai caught Touya grinning over at the bar. He'd probably never been so proud of his sister as that day.

They told a few stories from the early days, they joked about Sakura being the only girl on the tour bus, they squashed the rumour that they were starting their own clothing line. They promised that as soon as the tour was over in November, they were all going back to Chicago and hitting the studio for a new album.

"Oh, I write all the time," Fai said when Robert asked when they'd found time to compose new tracks for the next album. "We've only released two albums, I have at least the bare bones of forty songs for us to try, not to mention some covers that we want to look into making official. The cover we played of 'Hey Jude' at the Grammys has something like three million hits on Youtube."

"Fai, we've all seen your skill with music. You seem to play a little bit of every instrument they can throw at you." He'd been known to take over Touya's keyboard, to pick up a guitar for a song or two, to drag out a mandolin or an accordion or a flute or on one memorable and infamous occasion, a trumpet. "Do you write all the music yourself?"

"Absolutely not," Fai said, grimacing at the very idea. He was good at starting things. The others were the ones good at finishing them. "I'll sketch out a concept, and that's when everybody else jumps in with their own ideas. We decide together on whose instrument will be dominant in a piece, who will do backup vocals, that kind of thing. I get lyrics from a thousand different places, and often from the rest of the band. I think all musicians are magpies to some extent. Me more than most."

Sakura nudged him with her foot. "Don't let the charming humility thing fool you. He does take suggestions and he's very fair, but the stuff he writes is brilliant. We're all lucky he came along."

Despite himself, Fai felt warm at that. It was hard sometimes. He was the one who had come along. Didn't fit in, hadn't already been there. But it was true that he was the driving force of creativity, and there would be no Paper Cranes without him. It was somewhat reassuring.

"Let's talk a minute about what you write. About lyrics," Robert said, and Fai grinned. Sakura nudged him with her foot again, but she was shaking her head and smiling absently into her empty glass. They'd been waiting for Robert to get to this; they'd been waiting for this since someone had put one word in neon in the lyrics in a Youtube video and started pointing it out to everyone. This was the question he'd been waiting to ask until he thought he had them loose and relaxed.

"Pinocchio," Fai said.

The Paper Cranes' number one hit. It sold out their concerts, got them the Grammy nomination, put Sakura on the map. The spiraling darkness of the drum solo was nothing short of a miracle. They all swore she grew an extra set of feet for the bass pedals that nobody could see when they performed 'Pinocchio.' Plus everyone liked the cynicism of the lyrics. It had a subtitle. The song was actually called 'Pinocchio (Lying: A Love Story)' and the crowd's cheering grew a savage edge every time Fai sang about the bullshit lovers feed each other.

"Pinocchio," Robert agreed. "Need another drink?"

"God, yes, I do. 'The words are cheap/all I need is you/baby go to sleep/she doesn't look at you like I do.' Those are the lyrics, yeah?"

"She," Robert said.

"She," Fai said agreeably, sipping another mojito and wondering if he should switch to water. It wasn't like he was actually done drinking, but he didn't want _Rolling Stone_ to put him down as an alcoholic. It was so fucking cliché. He'd be cliché in private, thanks.

"There've been a few different interpretations tossed around about that," Robert said, like they didn't know. "If the song really is about a man singing to a woman, which is understandably the assumption, then the interpretation is that the woman might be bisexual. But then people have considered that it's actually meant to be from a woman's perspective, which is ballsy of a male singer to do. Then of course there's the interpretation that it's about a male homosexual couple and the errant partner is bisexual. You've got the world in an uproar about _your_ sexuality, Fai. So let's lay it to rest: which interpretation is correct?"

"Yes."

He and Sakura snickered at each other at the frustrated, confounded look Robert wore.

"Yes?"

"Yes. It's all of them. I wrote the song for everyone in a relationship. Don't limit it with questions about the gender or sexuality of the narrator _or_ the singer. Just let people enjoy the music, man. That's what it's for."

"What about you, Fai? Are you willing to lay the question of your sexuality to rest? I assume it hasn't escaped your attention that people are highly divided over the idea of a rock star being gay."

"Fucking hell, really? Our keyboardist and bass player got a photo taken of them making out behind the tour bus last year and somehow the gender of the narrator in a song is what has people talking?"

Touya and Yukito preferred to keep their private life to themselves, but they'd never made any big secret of what they were. It had been pretty well-known among the more loyal and earlier part of the fan base, enough so that the paparazzi photo had barely even made a splash.

Still, Yukito's ears had turned pink over at the bar and Touya was hunched over and glowering.

"It's your refusal to answer the question that has people curious, Fai. You act like you've got something to hide. It's got people upset."

What he meant was, they were in the background and people didn't always know their names. Fai was the singer, the spark, the front man. Girls threw underwear at him, among other things. Fai could have gotten mad at the implication that Touya and Yukito, who had started all of this, were less important than he was. Instead, he just shrugged. "That's the thing, Robert. I _don't_ have anything to hide." He spread out his arms. "I haven't got any boyfriends, girlfriends, no secret lovers. If I ever fall in love, I'll be sure to inform the public of their gender immediately."

Sakura snorted. "I don't see what this line of questioning has to do with our music," she spoke up. After having been quiet so long, it seemed to startle Robert. "I don't see you asking this about anybody else in the band, and I don't remember any recent interviews in your magazine where other artists got hounded about their sexuality. Why don't you ask me about mine?"

Sakura wore torn leggings, clunky knee-high boots, a loose tshirt with a picture of Audrey Hepburn on it. The chunky cuffs on her wrists seemed to accentuate the cords of muscle in her arms. She had nine ear piercings and a bar through the back of her neck, plainly revealed by her spiked-up hair The flowers she was named for were tattooed in a giant swath up across her chest, shoulder, and down one arm. She looked wild and dangerous and not a little questionable.

Robert's face was regretful. "We all know the story about your old boyfriend, Sakura. I know it's been some time, but I'm sorry for your loss."

"Why? Did you know him?" she asked, over-sweet. Then, "Come on, Fai. The interview is over."

Fai was the one who hadn't been there. The outsider they'd brought in after things fell apart. But maybe that was exactly the reason that as Touya and Yukito swooped in like a pair of guardian angels, Sakura clung to Fai's arm instead of theirs.

* * *

(_three years earlier_)

"Dear God, I just figured out who's singing," Touya muttered, nudging Yukito with his elbow and nodding surreptitiously across the room.

Yukito's eyes tracked the direction and found the middle-aged woman whose muffin top spilled over a pair of very, very skinny white jeans.

"I don't want anybody else/and when I think about you/I touch myself," she sang tremulously, eyes on the floor.

Yukito winced. "I really hope somebody takes that lady home tonight. She's pretty."

"You volunteering?" Touya asked wryly, signaling the bartender for another vodka-whatever-this-was. The slender, gorgeous blond slid up and poured quickly, flashing an easy grin before hurrying on to all his other customers. Karaoke night seemed to be busy around here.

"It's a good night to be a gay man," Yukito said slyly, not only squeezing a little too high for decency on Touya's thigh, but sending a surreptitious glance at the bartender's ass.

Touya laughed and wished they had gone someplace where he could have made out with his boyfriend for that. Still, karaoke had sounded like fun at the time. Neither of them had been around music very much the past few years, and they both missed it. All of it. They missed the crowds, the opening acts, they missed scouring videos and recordings for new skills to pick up, they missed practicing every day, they missed performing— They missed Kurogane. But Kurogane was too caught up in missing Syaoran to miss them, so . . . Music had been scarce, lately. Karaoke sounded undemanding and simple.

It had been pretty fun, so far. They'd both been studying too much. The Long Goodbye had gotten big enough that they'd all dropped out of college, but the past two years had seen them throwing themselves into their respective degrees (engineering for Touya, pre-med for Yukito, who was thinking about becoming a physical therapist).

Neither of them was interested in singing tonight, themselves. But it was nice to be surrounded by people who just liked music for its own sake. Even if they all sucked. Every. Single. One of them. Touya was trying to pretend he hadn't heard some stupid kid _butcher_ The Who half an hour ago. At least he had the blessing of not really knowing most of the country songs and therefore not having to realize how poor the performances of them were.

"Okay!" the karaoke host said cheerfully. "We've had a lot of requests for a particular song tonight, sung by a particular person! Fai, I'm afraid the crowd just isn't going to let you get away tonight. I know you tried to beg off earlier, so I'll give you choice of song if you want, but everybody wants to hear you sing 'Livin On A Prayer.'"

The crowd was laughing, roaring approval, clapping. Having no idea what was going on, Touya and Yukito joined in the applause. Why not? Their ears were going to bleed when the singer inevitably screeched through that last high note, but they'd probably already been through the worst the evening had to offer.

It was quite a surprise when the microphone went hand-over-hand and ended up in front of the blushing, protesting bartender. God, he even blushed pretty. Neither Touya nor Yukito was a jealous lover, being as they were so incredibly secure in their relationship, so they both took a moment to appreciate it.

After a moment of fumbling with the microphone, the first notes of the music started. The bartender (Fai, wasn't it?) . . . changed. A weight pressed down on his shoulders, even though he kept smiling.

Then he sang.

Yukito's hand gripped Touya's under the edge of the bar. "Oh my god," he breathed.

For all he hadn't wanted the mic in his hands, Fai was a performer born. His voice was clear and vibrant, he had the whole crowd listening and cheering, he was pulling antics with anyone near him and grinning. People were whistling and clapping.

He hit the high note.

He made it sound _good_.

What the hell?

"Oh my god," Yukito mumbled, grabbing Touya's hand under the edge of the bar.

Then it was over, the crowd was applauding again, and he was ducking his head and scurrying around with a bottle of rum in one hand and three dirty plates in the other.

"Touya," Yukito gasped, his hand still gripping tight enough to hurt. "That's him."

"Who?"

"The singer."

"What singer?"

"The one we need to start the band back up."

Touya had pretended for two years that he didn't want that. He'd pretended that engineering was a good enough dream and that music had just been a childish thing, The Long Goodbye was a garage band who'd accidentally got a break and it was never meant to last. Because there was something they weren't going to get back, no matter how they might wish for it.

"Kurogane's not going to—"

"Maybe not. I wasn't going to ask him until we talk to Fai and find out if we've got something to ask him about."

They waited outside. They waited for over two hours, until the bar was cleared out and shut down and cleaned up. Finally, Fai emerged with a coworker and headed for a dingy little pickup truck.

"Hey," Touya called, rising up from where he'd been leaning on his own boring Honda. He'd gotten rid of the beat-up minivan when the band broke up and there was no more equipment to haul around. "Hey, Fai."

He whirled around, muscles tense, eyes nervous. "What?"

"We just wanted to talk to you, that's all."

"I have a gun."

"Wow. Not that kind of talking. We were inside."

"I remember. Vodka cranberry."

"Is that what it was? Ugh, no wonder. Anyway, we heard you sing."

"You can hear me sing every Saturday night. Almost always the same song, unfortunately, but—"

"Fai, have you ever thought about singing professionally?" Yukito asked, stepping up beside Touya.

That shut him up.

"We're starting a band. Well, restarting, more like. Ever heard of The Long Goodbye?" he asked with good humour. The answer tended to be "no."

Fai's eyes went wide and stunned. "Oh my god. You're Yukito. The bassist. You— you're amazing!" He turned his eyes on Touya. "You're Touya?"

"Yup."

"Is Kurogane here?" he asked, turning his head from side to side to scan the emptied parking lot.

"No," he answered past the tang of bitterness. "No, just the two of us. You're probably hungry, right? You were working hard in there tonight. There's an all-night IHOP two blocks over. Let's talk."

Fai tossed a gym bag into the cab of his truck and turned around. "Okay."

* * *

They were splurging on motel rooms tonight because they were in Left Armpit, Missouri or something like that and they were all desperate to escape the humidity. It was turning Kamui's hair curly and therefore he was snarling and rude. Luckily the motel was cheap and mostly vacant, so the only person who was sharing a room with him and forced to put up with it was his brother.

Fai kind of wondered if the other roadies got jealous of the fact that Fuuma and Kurogane usually got treated like members of the band, but it wasn't as though they were _trying_ to play favourites. It was just that Kurogane sort of _was_ a member, and Fuuma basically went everywhere that Kurogane did. Those two had been their entire road crew when they'd started, so it made sense that they hung around the musicans more than the other techs.

At the moment, they were all crowded into the room that Fai, Fuuma, and Kurogane were ostensibly sharing. Kurogane seemed likely to slip out and sleep in the equipment trailer to get away from the noise, and Fuuma seemed likely to be murdered in a fit of grumpy rage if he didn't leave Kamui's hair alone. Fai might end up with a room to himself after all. Fai had pulled out all the equipment for his Wii and started an impromptu Super Smash Bros tournament, which after seeing the general mood of everyone seemed in retrospective to have been a bad idea. Subaru was silent, Kamui was pissy, Kurogane seemed tired, and Sakura was declaring that she needed to study.

Mostly his regret was tied to the way Sakura was cheerfully kicking his ass. Fai had a Wii, an old Nintendo 64, and an Xbox he dragged around and was reigning champion of all three. Unless he was playing against Sakura, who seemed to _destroy_ him in every combat game he owned.

Dinner was crinkly bags of chips and a 24 pack of Corona that Fuuma had gotten at Circle K. No one felt like finding a grocery store to put together a more substantial meal. Fai glanced over at Sakura during a pause and found her with a mouthful of Cheetos and a beer in the hand that wasn't holding the controller. He laughed to himself. All joking with Robert the hipster reporter aside, she made it easy to forget there was a girl in their band.

"I'm going to go study, guys," Sakura said after a few more minutes of owning everyone. "I've got a test tomorrow."

There was a chorus of goodnights and one proud "thatta girl" from Yukito. Touya was the one who'd insisted she had to take online classes or she wasn't allowed to travel with Paper Cranes, but Yukito was the one who helped her study and made sure she stayed on track. She'd had to repeat a year of high school because she'd missed so much after the accident, so she was a little behind with college, but she said she'd have her associate's degree by Christmas.

Sakura tossed her controller to someone, and Fai started to give his up to give someone else a turn. But then Kurogane sat down beside him, the cheap motel bed sagging under his weight and tilting Fai toward him. Fai scooted over to balance things out and didn't say anything. Kurogane wouldn't have taken the opportunity to play with him unless he wanted to talk, so Fai would wait until he said what was on his mind.

Things were . . . not easy, between the two of them. Not bad, exactly, just . . . not easy. Fai tried to keep a good rapport with everyone, and he knew Kurogane was approachable if not friendly with most of them, but somehow the two of them always felt better keeping their distance from each other.

"What's up, man?" he said casually, just to make some noise. Fai could be in a room with other people where no one was speaking, that didn't bother him—but when it was Kurogane, the quiet somehow felt heavier than with anyone else.

"Nothing," Kurogane mumbled, already working on his usual gaming strategy of pounding his opponent to death. Fai was quick enough to dodge, so Kurogane was going to have to get more creative if he wanted to win, here. "How was the interview?"

"Boring, mostly. Guy was kind of a putz." Fai almost said, _"worth it for the free drinks"_ and then remembered who he was talking to. Kurogane was drinking water and didn't seem concerned about the bottles piling up around him, and Fai knew he tended not to get emotional about his former alcoholism, but saying something like that would sound like Fai was baiting him, which he wasn't.

This was why things were not easy. Talking was like walking through a minefield.

"He ask?"

"Ask what?" Fai replied innocently. Okay, so occasionally he baited the guy.

"About Pinocchio, stupid."

Kurogane managed to land a hit and moved in for the kill while Fai's character was reeling. Fai frantically moved to retreat.

"Sorta. He mostly was just trying to be the guy who reported my coming out, so that was all he really cared about."

"So is he going to be?"

Fai's eyes jerked sideways to Kurogane, startled. The question had, up to this point, only been asked by reporters and fans, while the band and crew minded their own damn business. Kurogane, the guy he was _least_ friendly with, was going to be the one to step over the line?

"I meant did you answer."

"Oh. No. Fuck 'im." Fai managed to land a hit that left Kurogane's character stunned, so he decided sauce for the gander was sauce for the goose and started beating on him ferociously. "I know what you wanted to ask. Don't worry about it. I didn't mention you."

"Good."

"We had a quick huddle before the interview, actually, we decided I'd just take all the credit," Fai grinned, knowing how much of an asshole that made him sound.

"Kamui was okay with that?"

"He agreed that it was safest, considering that the public's freaking over the whole thing right now. Better to just let me take the fall if there's going to be one."

Kurogane was hunched over his controller, scowling ferociously as he tried to fend off Fai's attack. He just grunted an acknowledgement.

"Of course he wasn't okay with it, he's pissed as hell. What do you think he's so pissed off about tonight?"

Kurogane's eyes flicked to Kamui briefly. He was strung tight as a wire, talking to Subaru and attempting to ignore Fuuma, who was oh-so-innocently playing a handheld game while repeatedly putting his feet in Kamui's lap and getting them shoved right back off.

"I figured it's cause the humidity makes him look like a poodle."

Fai snickered. "Two blows to his ego in one day, poor thing."

"It's not exactly fair."

"Yeah, well, life isn't."

* * *

(_one year, three months ago_)

"Who had an orange freeze shake?"

"No, no, the paper has to be focused on pre-Revolution stuff, I can't talk about Washington's tenure in office," Sakura told Yukito, using two pencils to drum out a rhythm on the table while she supposedly worked on a draft of an essay for her online history course.

"Fuuma, cut it out!" Kamui shouted, using a napkin to wipe the back of his neck.

"Hey, Subaru, you okay?" Fai nudged the quiet man at his side, but Subaru just kept frowning. "Did you get another letter from that goddamn creep?"

"I'm fine," Subaru answered, picking up a chicken finger and nibbling at it.

"Anybody over here get an orange freeze shake?"

"Hey, you stole my fries!" Fuuma snapped at Kurogane, clutching at his plate jealously.

"Kamui, here, what do you think?" Fai asked, shoving a page of chicken-scratch lyrics across the table.

"No, something still feels off," Kamui muttered, picking up his pen and crossing out a line, scribbling another possibility. "Cut it the _fuck out_, Fuuma!" he hollered over the divider between booths, swiping at another spitwad that had landed in his hair.

Touya shoved the remains of his hamburger aside and put his head down in his hands. "Yukito, I'm going back to the bus. I'm too old for this shit."

"Hang on, babe, I'll go back with you, let me just try to get the name of this book really quick for Sakura," Yukito replied, typing on his phone.

"_Hey_!"

Everyone in all three booths shut up simultaneously and stared at the waitress who was standing there looking murderous.

"Did one of you order an orange shake."

"Oooo, me!" Fai said happily, waving his hand.

It was plunked down in front of him with possibly more force than necessary.

"Thanks sooo much, sweetheart," Fai said, giving her a million-watt smile. "I'm just trying to get something right and I tend to get a little distracted when I'm working." He winked for good measure.

"That's— no problem—" the woman stuttered, face turning pink. "E-enjoy. Let me know if you need anything."

"Absolutely," Fai said, grinning until she was gone. Then he scowled down at the change Kamui was suggesting.

Kamui threw his hands up in the air. "I don't like it, either, but it's still better than what you had!"

"Ugh, we're writing a song about _lying_, this should be _easy_," Fai groaned.

Subaru stole his shake and tasted it. "That's really good," he said with delight. "I'm gonna get one when she comes back. He craned his neck to see the paper better. "You should put in something about their ex. Something . . . I don't know. They don't want you back?"

"Maybe," Fai said, narrowing his eyes. "See if you can come up with a second line that rhymes with 'back' and doesn't suck. You can have this," he added, sliding the shake over.

"Um, you don't want it?"

"I like it, but I don't think it's making my eyes light up the way it does yours. You are clearly getting more out of it than I am," Fai smiled, nudging him and cajoling him into taking the drink.

Subaru smiled softly and took it, and made Fai wonder all over again how this quiet and shy kid had ever wanted to be in a rock band. Kamui was glaring at him in that _"hands off my twin"_ way he had, except maybe Fai was just getting the twin-glare confused with the Fuuma-glare because he used both of them so often, because when he opened his mouth it was to roar,

"I swear to God, Fuuma!"

Kurogane thumped the lighting technician on the back of the head as he stood up from the booth they were sharing with Touya. "I'm going to the john. Try not to get killed, you moron, I need you."

Kurogane was officially in charge of their sound equipment and mainly focused on guitar tech, but unofficially he was the manager of the entire road crew. Fuuma was good enough at his job that Kurogane would probably miss him if Kamui actually slit his throat.

Kurogane passed by their booth on his way to the bathroom and his arm stretched out in front of Fai's face.

"Here."

A napkin fluttered down and Fai pinned it with his pen and dragged it closer.

_Don't mind spending words when they're cheap_

_All I ever wanted was you_

_Baby stop talking and to go sleep_

_She never looked at you the way I do_

"Hooolyyy shit," Fai drawled, eyes wide. "Kamui. Kamui, Kurogane just wrote our song for us."

Kamui snatched up the napkin and studied it, and his fingers were twitching on a phantom guitar. "Lines are too long for what I'm hearing," he pronounced, setting it down. He was humming the phrasing he wanted, and Subaru was sitting forward with interest, humming his own guitar's counterpoint.

"It'll work," Subaru said. "Just shave it down a little. Simplify. It'll work."

Fai's head was bobbing, beginning to hear the song. "Yeah. Sakura! You've got some serious work to do with this one! We'll start going over it tomorrow!" Sakura gave him thumbs up and went back to drumming on the edge of her table while Yukito read over her draft. Kurogane was walking past again on his way back to his seat. "Hey, Kurogane!" he said, snatching at one heavily-tattooed arm and stopping him. "She? Why she?"

Kurogane shrugged. "Why not? Sounds better that way," he said simply.

This was probably the closest Fai had ever been, physically, to Kurogane. He found himself staring at the design worked into his arm. Some kind of Asian dragon, a water motif, lots of blue and green, this was the most gorgeous sleeve piece Fai had ever seen, and there was the other arm with all the red and orange and some kind of feather pattern that he wanted to see, too . . .

Kurogane tugged his arm free. "Dude, you want a picture, or the name of my tattoo artist or what?"

Fai smiled sweetly up at him. "Yeah, sure. Would fanmail be weird? Because I want to write your artist fan letters. Damn, that is cool."

"Thanks," Kurogane said gruffly, then pulled out his wallet and tossed money in front of Fuuma. "I'm beat, I'm going back to the bus to crash. If you wake me up when you come in, I'll fucking kill you."

"You say the sweetest things to me, baby," Fuuma said, distracted in the process of making another spitwad to shoot at Kamui. Then he looked up and grinned. Touya had already vacated the booth to go lay down on the empty side of the one where Sakura and Yukito were studying, so Fuuma was alone in his booth. He jumped up and slid into their booth next to Kamui. "I wanna see what you're writing."

"Go the fuck away."

"No. It's about lying, right? You lie to me all the time, this should be cake."

"When do I lie to you?"

"You tell me that you hate me and you want me to leave you alone _all the time,_" he pouted. "Such hurtful, callous lies."

"Subaru, for the love of God, switch places with me. I am still eating and I'm not abandoning my food because of this cretin."

Fai watched Subaru and Kamui slither underneath the table to switch seats and wondered how he'd ever thought being a bartender was an exciting job. His life was freaking cool.

* * *

Kurogane and Fuuma were both outside checking on the rest of the crew and making sure the equipment was locked up tight for the night. They had only a short drive to St. Louis for their show there tomorrow night, but they wanted to be up early so everyone could check out the city sights before they started setting up.

Fai locked the bathroom door and gnawed on his lower lip for a minute. If they were getting up early, he should get to sleep soon and that made this a bad idea. But he was getting pretty antsy and he didn't think he was going to be able to sleep anyway. He'd better.

"Just enough to take the edge off," he muttered, pulling the baggie out of his pocket and flipping his wallet open to get out a credit card. Just a little. Sprinkle it on the counter, and carefully line it up with the card. He'd pocketed his drinking straw at the bar earlier and borrowed Kamui's pocketknife a few minutes ago to cut it in half.

Fai bent over, snorted, and straightened up all in one movement. "Guh," he gasped, sniffing rapidly. He rinsed the straw out in the sink before throwing it away and used a wad of damp toilet paper to make sure the counter was clean and wipe around his nose. He stayed in the bathroom for a couple of minutes to make sure his nose didn't start to bleed.

The eyes looking back at him in the age-spotted mirror were mocking him.

"I'm an idiot. I know. So fuck you."

Kurogane and Fuuma were coming back in, bickering about something. Fai pasted a smile on before unlocking the door and sauntering out. Maybe he'd go sit outside on the stairs and write for a while. Would he be keeping anyone awake if he took his guitar out there? Probably. He'd just work on lyrics or something. He could sleep tomorrow afternoon while everyone else was checking out St. Louis, that town was a hole and there was nothing he wanted to see.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," he muttered with each step out of the room after bidding the other two goodnight.

His life was such a fucking joke sometimes.

* * *

**A/N:** Yep. Writing a story about them being in a band. There will be sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. XD Also, prepare for truckloads of tragic backstory. You give me any version of Kurogane and Fai, and I will ruin their childhoods just to be a dick. This is why we can't have nice things.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

_now I know that I'm not_

_all that you've got_

_I guess that I, I just thought_

_maybe we could find new ways to fall apart_

* * *

"So where are we again?" Sakura asked, draping herself over a sound board and letting out a gusty sigh.

"Uh . . . Shit," Fuuma answered distractedly, trying to untangle a snarl of wires. "Kurogane, where the hell are we?" he shouted.

"Boston, dumbass."

"Right," Sakura mumbled, closing her eyes like she meant to take a nap right where she stood. "Do we get a night off soon?"

"Two days off, starting tomorrow," Kurogane said as he came over and nudged her off his equipment. "You all right?"

"We haven't had a break since St. Louis," she sighed. "What's it been, two weeks?"

"Something like that."

He was looking at her fondly and his arm half-reached toward her, but it was an aborted move and he went back to messing with the buttons on his sound board. Sakura sidled up to him and carefully snuggled her way under his arm.

"Hey," she said softly. "You think you're not allowed to give me a hug, or what?"

"I didn't . . ."

"When did I say you're allowed to stop being my family, huh?" she added, pinching his side through his tshirt.

Kurogane started to pull himself away from her, but she wrapped both arms around him and clung. "You— shit, Sakura. You know I— Syaoran was the only thing that—"

"Bullshit," she said firmly, not giving him an inch. "You're my honorary big brother forever whether you like it or not, so suck it up and gimme a real hug."

He stopped fighting her off and just hugged her as ordered. "Only because girls are scary when they're angry," he sighed.

"Thank you." She finally let him go, but only so she could help sort out the snarl of wires She wasn't leaving him alone just yet. "So how are you? I feel like I haven't talked to you in forever. Things have been hectic."

Kurogane just grimaced. "Same old, I guess. Why?"

"Because for aforementioned reasons, I care? Hey, did you like that book I gave you?"

"The one from your lit class? Yeah, it wasn't bad. You got anything new for me?"

"Not lately. My summer classes suck."

Kurogane snorted. "You say that every semester. You don't even like school."

"Yeah, but Touya's right, I need to finish. I have to set an example for all these other uneducated idiots, right?" she joked. She didn't judge any of them for not finishing school, but she was willing to listen to her older brother's advice and keep going for herself. As far as she knew, Touya was the only one among them who'd acheived a college degree. Kamui and Subaru had never even finished high school. "I at least want to get the associate's, just so I have a jumping-off point if I need it later. I don't even know what I'd focus on if I went for my bachelor's degree, I just . . . All I've ever wanted to do, I'm already doing, you know?"

"Yeah, I do," Kurogane said quietly, and reached out a hand to ruffle her hair. "Ugh, how much gel do you put in this?"

Sakura just grinned.

"Not that I don't like this, because you look good, but how come you chopped it? Your old hair was pretty."

She restrained herself from further teasing him—that was one of the most big-brother things he could have possibly said but pointing it out would just make him standoffish again. She tried to think of a good answer, because cutting off her hair had been rather spur-of-the-moment but she really liked how it had turned out. "Just felt like doing something new, I guess," she sighed, staring up at the stage where a team of people was starting to get things set up. It wasn't their people, it was a couple of the arena's employees and the members of the opening act. "Hey, Kurogane?"

"Yeah?"

"If you ever want to get up there and play with us . . . That would be cool. Just, you know, one night for fun or something."

"No," he said firmly. "But, um, thanks."

Yeah. She'd already known what his answer would be, but she'd just wanted him to hear her say it. "Kurogane?"

"Seriously, Sakura, _don't_."

"Will you make sure Ellen is in charge of bringing out my drum set? She's the only one that takes good care of it. And I like checking out her ass when she's not looking."

Kurogane looked startled for a minute, then he started laughing. Good. He didn't do that enough. "You really are something else, kiddo. I didn't even know you—well, anyway. Yeah, I'll make sure it's Ellen."

"You're the best," Sakura said with a wink, and sauntered away. She hadn't thought it would be such a huge priority, after the accident, but for some reason she could not rest until she had re-mastered sauntering. It was hard to do with the way her legs were, but the sassy last word in a conversation was just a necessary part of a girl's repertoire.

* * *

(_five years and two months ago_)

The phone was ringing. Kurogane had his head buried under a pillow to escape the sunlight that was insisting he should arise for the day, and he groaned when the telephone jumped in with its opinion.

He didn't get a lot of phone calls, anymore. He hadn't been answering them for three months and nearly everyone had stopped trying. There was one person who still left a voicemail sometimes, and Kurogane buried himself yet further under his pillow when that voice started sounding from the answering machine over on the kitchen ledge. He'd fallen asleep on the couch while watching t.v. again, it seemed.

"Hey. Um. Hey, man, it's Touya. Listen. I know that things are . . . I know you've been . . . Listen, I've been trying to leave you alone. But it's about Sakura. The therapy clinic is releasing her to go home tomorrow, and we were thinking that we'd have a welcome-home party."

Kurogane felt his pulse pounding dully in his head. _Shut up shut up shut up shut up_

"Nothing big, just a little get-together, some of the people who care about her, you know, just to say we're glad she's coming home. I . . . I know it would be hard for you, but I know you love Sakura and it would mean a lot to her."

He only had twenty more seconds before the machine cut him off. Twenty seconds, tops, and then Kurogane could jump up and delete the message and never have to think about this again. But his head pounded and his mouth was dry and he wanted to puke. Twenty seconds was a long time. His heart, which had been through enough the past few months and which he'd thought had totally died by now, just given up and crapped out on him, throbbed dully at hearing his best friend's voice.

_Shut up shut up shut up all of you just shut up_

"Listen, man, I won't bring up the band or anything, I _promise_, it's just, we miss you and—"

Kurogane was across the room and snatching up the phone in a flash, not thinking about how much he missed this voice, how much he missed everything because more than all of that he missed _Syaoran_—

"Shut up, shut up for the love of God Touya just stop it," he blurted into the phone, wiping away a clammy layer of sweat on his forehead. "I can't— just stop talking, I can't deal with it."

"Kurogane." Touya's voice was fuzzy through the line, but he could hear the wonderment and shock. "H-hey. It's good to hear your voice."

"Don't, okay? Just don't. Just hang up and _go away_. I am fifty-seven days sober and I am _not_ starting back at zero again, so just _leave me alone_ before I . . ."

"Fifty seven days, huh?" Touya said softly. "That's . . . that's really great news. I'm happy for you."

"Oh fuck you, you aren't happy at all."

"Kurogane? Don't. Don't you fucking _dare_ question me. I am fucking happy for you, okay? I mean, I didn't know where you were, if you were . . . I haven't heard from you in three months, you know. I didn't know what was going on. I'm happy enough that you picked up the phone. Thank you," he finished on a snarl.

Kurogane let out a weak, rusty chuckle. "You're welcome, you sorry bastard."

There was a long, deep silence.

"How are you, Kurogane? Really?"

"Uh . . . I don't know," he admitted. His attention was caught by his own arms. The dragon and the phoenix had been outlined months ago but only a third of the colouring was done. He'd made and broken two appointments with his artist for another session. He barely left his apartment unless he needed food. He didn't think he'd done laundry since he'd stopped sweating through his clothes a couple of weeks into sobriety and it stopped seeming necessary. He took a whiff of his shirt and grimaced. "Not that great?"

"Yeah. Can we do anything?"

"No," he said forcefully.

"Do you at least want to come by for dinner or something?"

"No. I'm not coming tomorrow, I don't want help, I don't want to see you guys. Leave me alone, seriously, man. I _can't_. Just stop trying."

"No," Touya said plainly. "I get that you don't want to see us right now, okay? But no, I'm not going to stop trying. We've been friends since we were fifteen, dude, I've seen enough of your ugly side to know whether or not I want to walk away. And I don't. Got it?"

Kurogane slid down to sit on the floor and put his head between his knees. "Yeah, I got it," he choked.

"I'm not going to bother you about coming over anymore. But you know the door is open if you ever show up. That's from me, Yuki, _and_ it's from Sakura. She keeps asking about you. She misses you."

"Yeah, well, I never thought she was all that sane and rational."

Touya chuckled. "She's a loud-mouthed brat is what she is. I'll try to keep her from bothering you. For a while."

"Hey. Is she— how is she?"

Touya gave that a moment of silence, maybe to acknowledge what it cost him to ask or maybe just to find a way to phrase it that was different from the pat answer he gave to everyone who asked.

"She's all right. She's still hurting, her legs are still pretty messed up, and she, uh, she cries a lot, cries herself to sleep most nights, but . . . She's tough, you know? She's trying. She's glad to be coming home."

"Yeah," Kurogane said, and then couldn't say anything else. "Hey, I gotta get going soon, I have—" he looked at his outstretched arm again. "I have an appointment."

"Hey. Take care of yourself, since you won't let us do it. Fifty seven days and counting, right? And just . . . Keep in touch. Please. You don't have to see us. But just let us know what's going on once in a while, okay?"

"Yeah," he said softly. "Okay."

It took him half an hour and a cup of coffee before he mustered up the strength to pick up the phone again. He called his tattoo artist.

"Yo, Jenny, it's Kurogane. I'm good. Yeah, you? Swell. Listen, I want to make an appointment. I swear I'm going to keep it this time. No, I actually promise. I haven't been . . . But I'm doing better. So. No, actually, not this time. Well, yeah, of course I want to get them finished. I just want something else first. It's gonna be small. Just. Yeah. Thursday? Great. Thanks."

He got up on Thursday, late in the morning, and threw on his freshly laundered clothes, thinking to himself _fuck yeah I did laundry and I'm leaving the house in the same week_ and _sixty days and counting _and _miss you Syaoran miss you so much I can't even fucking breathe and I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry_

* * *

Fai and Sakura were going over the set list for the show one last time while the roadies were scurrying around, getting things set up in earnest. The show was starting in less than an hour, with some local skapunk band opening up for them. Trumpets were blaring somewhere behind the stage, warming up. Fai's attention was caught by a gleam of sweaty skin, and he looked over.

It was an outdoor venue, and in Boston's muggy late summer it was sweltering. Kurogane had taken his shirt off while hauling equipment around. He wasn't the only guy to have done so, but he was the only guy who looked _that damn good_ in nothing but blue jeans and a pair of work boots. Sweat was running down the back of his neck and dripping over the gigantic tattoo that covered most of his back, a Japanese demon-mask head, red-lacquered and grinning ferociously. His arms had originally been done with half-sleeves that stopped at the elbow, but new things were being added all the time and flames had started licking up one arm while waves and water spirits were cresting up toward the other shoulder.

He had an ornate-looking scroll with two swords crossed behind it, surrounded by falling sakura blossoms on his ribcage, low on his right side. But the front of his torso was nearly bare. (All the better for staring at the cut of his abs, _God Almighty_.) But only nearly.

On his left breast, over his heart, there was something so simple and so different from the colorful intricate designs on the rest of his body that it screamed for attention. Just some words. _Syaoran_ it said in larger letters above, and below, slightly smaller, _April 1__st__ 1991 - March 28__th__ 2007_. There was a funny little paw print beside the name, like a small dog had stepped in ink and walked on his chest.

Fai was so very, very glad that he'd been a fan of The Long Goodbye and had known about the circumstances of their breakup before he met Kurogane. Otherwise he would have opened his big fat fucking mouth and joked about old Kurogane's dog had been and how much he must have loved it.

He still didn't really know the significance of the paw print. But he did know that Kurogane's younger brother had died three days before his sixteenth birthday.

That was what had caused Kurogane to quit the band he'd fronted just when they were starting to make it. There had been rumours that he was an alcoholic at the ripe old age of twenty two, and then suddenly he was joining AA and getting sober and going to school to become an _electrician_ of all the mundane things to be. The next part, Fai hadn't learned from the media or from being told, the next part he'd learned for himself through some quiet and skilled observation

For some reason, despite the fact that Kurogane hadn't been there, he seemed to think that car accident that had killed his brother and nearly taken Sakura had been his fault.

Somehow, managing their road crew instead of getting up onstage with them was Kurogane's penance. Fai had no right to pry into that. But God, he wanted to sometimes. He _knew_ what Kurogane could do with a guitar, had been to one of their concerts and _heard_ him sing—a fact he'd kept to himself. He'd love to hear it again. It _did things_ to him.

A band only needed one lead singer. Only needed one front man.

Fai had no doubts about who would front the Paper Cranes if Kurogane ever found a way to forgive himself for Syaoran's death. So he kept his mouth shut.

"You know, there's really only one way you could be more obvious," Subaru said, right in his ear. Sakura was ogling a woman from the road crew and hadn't noticed where Fai's attention was, and Fai jumped at the way Subaru had snuck up on him. "_Rolling Stone_ hasn't published the new issue yet. There's still time to call Robert back and make that announcement."

"Oh, screw you," Fai muttered, embarrassed at being caught without being too worried. He was safe with Subaru. And now that Sakura was looking at him with her eyebrows raised, he suddenly had the thought that despite Kurogane being practically a member of her family, she probably wouldn't mind his staring and probably wouldn't rat him out.

"I just missed something," she sighed, when Fai didn't respond to her questioning look. "Damn."

She probably wouldn't be bothered by it, but that didn't mean he was just going to blurt out that Kurogane's ass in those jeans was a work of art. There was a difference between being caught and volunteering the information.

Fuuma dropped something and Kurogane snapped at him. Fuuma snapped right back, and they got in each other's faces for a minute before heading off in opposite directions in a huff. That was odd, the two of them never seemed to fight in a serious way.

"Is it just me, or are you guys feeling really tired and cranky, too?" Subaru sighed, rubbing his eyes.

Fai looked back and forth between Sakura and Subaru with some alarm. "Guys, we have a show about to start. I am ordering you to have an energy drink chug contest. Go find a pack of Red Bull or whatever you've got to do."

"I'm good," Sakura said, and she smiled wryly. "I just drank a couple of Monsters. I'm just worn out, wishing the end of the tour would come faster."

"Three more weeks, you guys. We're almost there."

"I miss home. And I need to meet up with the advisor at school to talk about graduation."

"I miss home, too," Subaru said softly, playing with the sweat band on his wrist. "There's something I've been thinking about doing when we get back."

Subaru looked really simple tonight, Fai noticed. Instead of his tendency toward layers of matching clothes and accessories, he was dressed in nothing but a tight AC/DC tshirt and a pair of jeans, although he'd kept his trademark fedora. Fai was keeping it casual, too, in slim black pants and a henley with the neck unbuttoned. To make sure he wasn't too boring, he was wearing a pair of Chuck Taylors that were blindingly turquoise and folded over at the top to reveal a layer of white and blue underneath. It was too hot and disgusting for anything more elaborate. Sakura looked the most stage-ready, wearing a tank top that she'd slashed into ribbons in the front to show a second top beneath, and tight distressed denim bottoms, a studded belt and a studded cuff around her upper arm. She never wore necklaces, claiming they got caught on the piercing on her neck, but Fai suspected it was just so people weren't distracted from the cherry blossoms crawling over her shoulder.

"Assuming we still have a home, that is," Subaru added wryly, smiling with one corner of his mouth. "I think our lease expired four months ago."

Fai punched his arm. "Don't be stupid," he chided. "You know the only reason you have a lease is because Kamui has trust issues."

"Hah. Yeah. So long as the rent gets paid, I guess you trust us, right?"

Fai scowled, then wrapped an arm around his shoulders and bonked their heads together affectionately, nearly knocking Subaru's hat off. "Idiot. You know it's your home, no matter what. I've always paid the mortgage somehow."

Subaru ducked his head shyly. "Yeah. Thanks."

Sakura was shaking her head. "Do you know how hard it is to believe that you are responsible enough to own a home?" she said to Fai. "I mean, I know you have a house and those two rent from you, but you just do not seem like the home owning type."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, planting his hands on his hips. Then a pang of missing her went through him and he stopped playing around. "It was my mom's," he said simply, dropping his arms. "Come on, we need to finish getting ready." He started walking, then stopped suddenly, and stared down at Sakura's feet. "You are also wearing Chucks."

"Yes?" she said, looking down at her shoes with him.

"But yours have Batman on them."

"Yes, I know."

"_I need to know where you found shoes with the fucking Batman_."

"At the store, Fai. The _shoe_ store."

"Do they make Captain America shoes? Please tell me they make Captain America shoes."

"Uh, I don't think so, but I could make you Captain America shoes. I could just sew patches with his shield design onto your white ones."

"Have I mentioned today that you are my favourite?"

Subaru herded them backstage to join the others, patiently ignoring them for the most part, or at least he was trying to until Fai turned to him and interrupted Sakura to say,

"Hey, didn't you say you had something to do when we get back to Chicago?"

"Oh, yeah. It's nothing."

"Tell me."

Sakura nodded to them and slipped away to talk to the other guys, giving them a moment.

"I think . . . I think I want to go back to school," Subaru said, flushing red. "Kamui and I were talking about it, we both want to get our GED, but I was thinking about going to college. I was going to ask Sakura about how to sign up for classes. You know, I just . . . She and I are the same age, and she almost has a degree. I . . ."

"You're not stupid, and nobody thinks that," Fai said, giving him another arm-around-the-shoulders hug. "But if you want to do that, I think it's great. Let me know if I can help, yeah?"

"Thanks."

"Anytime. You know you're my favourite."

"I thought Sakura was your favourite."

"Shhh, don't tell her. I really want those shoes."

* * *

(_three years, one month ago)_

The meeting at IHOP didn't accomplish much, since it was three o'clock in the morning and Fai was exhausted. But hey, Touya paid so he wasn't going to complain about free french toast. He just rambled on about himself at their prompting. He had a degree in small business management, but he'd seen how hard it was to run the bar where he worked and he didn't really want to own his own restaurant anymore. He told them that while he didn't play professionally and never had, he considered himself a fairly skilled musician.

(He didn't like talking about Mom, it still hurt too much. Just let them think he'd taken music classes.)

That was about as far as they got, but they seemed to like him. They said they wanted to hear more about his musical skills, which was how Fai ended up inviting them over to his house the next time he worked a day shift and had a night free. He had never really considered doing anything with what he'd been taught about music. He knew he had a gift, but he hadn't pursued it.

(It hurt. A lot. He'd gotten it from her and sometimes he felt like he should have buried the music with her because it would be so much easier if he didn't have to feel all of this.)

It was a little different when two musicians you looked up to from a band you'd been a fan of started courting you.

So Fai met them at his bar and they followed him home. It was only a couple of miles, and Fai walked to work on occasion, especially if tips were bad that month and he was short on gas money. Thank God he had found roommates to help him cover the mortgage. Five minutes later, and suddenly two of the three members of The Long Goodbye were at Fai's home.

"Home sweet home," Fai said, gesturing them inside.

He could see their eyes taking everything in and wondering about him. The house had been Mom's, so it was surprisingly well put-together for three young bachelors. There was matching furniture and a colour scheme and everything. Music paraphernalia was everywhere, from a shadow-box of sheet music and a cello bow, to photos taken with members of the orchestra. Mom had stencil-painted musical notations in a border around the walls of the living room Fai directed them to.

They could hear the sounds of an acoustic guitar playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers further back in the house. Kamui often warmed up for a show by playing other people's music, saying it was more relaxing than playing his own stuff.

"Well it's killing me/when will I really see/all that I need to look inside . . ."

"That's not Anthony Kiedis," Touya said, lifting an eyebrow.

"Nope, that's Kamui," Fai said. "Sit down. You guys want anything to drink? I've got Coke and water and I think some orange juice, and let's see, some Heineken—"

"No, we're fine. Why don't you sit down? You're the one who's been working all day."

"True," Fai laughed, plopping down on the couch.

"Hey oh . . . Listen what I say, oh . . ."

"He's got a great voice," Yukito said in approval.

"That's him playing, too," Fai said. "He and Subaru both play guitar." He'd somehow failed to mention that the two roommates were both musicians as well. They, unlike him, were using it to make money (not counting the increase in tips when he sang karaoke).

"The more I see the less I—"

"Kamui! What are you doing? Our show is in an hour, hurry up and get ready!" called out a distressed voice.

"I am ready!" he hollered back.

"Then don't leave your stuff out after you get ready!"

Fai snickered. "Kamui's not so great about picking up after himself. It drives Subaru nuts."

"Are they, you know . . .?"

Fai snickered all the more. "They're twin brothers."

"Ah."

"Fai is that you?" Subaru called out, coming down the hall and poking his head into the room. "Who are you—oh. Sorry to interrupt."

"No, it's okay. Guys, this is Subaru. Subaru, this is Yukito and Touya."

"Hello," Subaru said softly, shy as always.

Fai couldn't help smirking at the way Yukito and Touya were sizing the kid up. Subaru was dressed in a sleeveless black number that buttoned up to his throat, black leather pants, red and black checkered shoes, about a dozen thin black bracelets on each arm, and a black fedora hat with a red band around it.

"Subaru!" Kamui bellowed, his footsteps sounding in the hallway. "Who are you— oh, hey. Fai, I didn't know you were home."

"These are my friends Yukito and Touya," Fai said mildly, gesturing to them. "Guys, Kamui."

Kamui had on tight, dark gray denim pants, so tight that the boots he wore fit nicely over them, coming up almost to his knees and with several more buckles than was strictly necessary. A belt that was studded with fake bullets was slung low over his hips. He was wearing a black vest, but with no shirt under it, and some kind of choker around his throat. Thick black eyeliner and smoky shadow drew attention to his face, despite his outfit. He was still carrying his guitar in one hand.

"Don't mind the sexy goth costumes, that's just normal for them," Fai said, waving a hand at them.

"You're an idiot," Kamui snorted. "We're playing a show tonight," he informed the other two. "This is what you wear when you're playing for ladies' night at a bar. Sorry for interrupting. See you later, Fai."

After the twins blew out the door, guitars and equipment bundled up in the back of their crappy 1970's hatchback, Touya grinned at him.

"Are they any good? Because this is getting better and better all the time."

* * *

Exhausted and irritable and bickering, they loaded themselves up onto their bus, trusting Kurogane and Fuuma to make sure the equipment and roadies got into the other vehicles safely. Touya and Yukito sometimes drove in a separate car to get some privacy, but tonight they were just as cranky and desperate for sleep as everyone else, so they went straight to the sleeping bunks on the second story of the bus and crashed.

Kamui flipped on the t.v. and he and Sakura began arguing about what movie to put on. Subaru looked too dazedly tired to care, stretching out on one of the benches. Fai gave him five minutes before he fell asleep. Someone would have to wake him up later to get him up to the bunks, and Fai wasn't going to volunteer. Subaru could be surprisingly vicious if you woke him up.

Fai had waited till the dressing room cleared out and had snorted a line before getting on the bus with them, meaning that while he was just as tired as the rest of them, he wasn't ready for sleep. He honestly felt wrung out and he knew he needed to get some rest, so he was swigging from a hip flask of vodka to mellow out while he pretended to watch t.v. His foot bobbed in time to the music in his head. He had a lot up there that wouldn't really be purged until he got into the studio and started recording.

"You all right?" Sakura asked, reaching her foot across the aisle to poke his leg with her toes.

Fai smiled at her as best he could. "Yeah, sweetheart. I'm great. Just tired."

"Go to sleep. We'll keep the t.v. volume low."

"Thanks. Not quite ready to sleep, but soon enough."

"Okay," she said, but she was looking at his vodka and frowning. Oh, please, he begged her silently in his head, please do not start. He could not handle that kind of conversation right now. Three more weeks, and they'd be home. Just three weeks and he could try to get a handle on this shit.

Everything was quiet for a few minutes, the only sound coming from the t.v. and the constant whizzing noise of Kamui moving the zipper up and down on his sleeveless hoodie, which he was wearing because in Kamui's world, a sleeveless hoodie constituted clothing.

"Hey, Kamui," Fai said. "Are you going to think about college, too, or is that just Subaru?"

Kamui frowned at Subaru, but since the kid had already dozed off, it didn't do much good. "Dunno yet," he said sullenly. "My first priority is getting this finished, and then I'll think about paying for school," he added, tracing a finger over the half-finished tattoo on his arm.

Fai himself did not have tattoos and didn't really care for any, but he kind of loved being in a rock band and admiring the stuff his bandmates did to themselves. Kamui had a score of sheet music that wrapped around his whole arm in a spiral from his shoulder to his elbow, with the musical notes for his solo in "Heaven and Earth and The Other Place" picked out against the five lines. The basic work was done, but he wanted some of the lines thickened, and he wanted the notes shaded, and a few hints of colour to be added in.

"You should think about it," Fai said slowly, carefully. The vodka was starting to make his tongue feel thick. "You've got so much talent, but getting into some music theory classes would be good for you."

"You mean good for the band."

"No, I don't. I mean for you," Fai said firmly. Kamui was a musican through and through. Anything that expanded his horizons would make him happier just as much as it would make him more talented.

Fai never had any siblings of his own, and he'd never really thought of himself as lonely, never thought of anything as missing. He'd never known he could be so good at bossing around and worrying over a little brother until he suddenly adopted a pair. He was just lucky that they let him do it.

He took one last pull from the flask and realized rather abruptly that exhaustion had fully set in. He barely managed to drag himself up to his bed, head swimming, and fell asleep without even taking his shoes off.

Someone took them off for him, later. He could hear voices around him, but they came like his ears were full of water, the voices muffled and liquid. They were taking his shoes off and putting a blanket over him.

"He seems off," Kamui's voice bubbled through the water.

"I'm worried about him too," Sakura wavered.

In the morning, he told himself he'd just dreamed it. It was easier that way.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

WARNING FOR SEXUAL CONTENT. SEE NOTE AT END OF CHAPTER.

_Well, Some nights, I wish that this all would end  
Cause I could use some friends for a change  
And some nights, I'm scared you'll forget me again  
Some nights, I always win, I always win..._

But I still wake up, I still see your ghost  
Oh Lord, I'm still not sure what I stand for, oh

"Eriol!" Yukito greeted him gladly as soon as he opened the door. They'd just texted him a few minutes ago and he was waiting in the front room.

"Hey, buddy!" Eriol replied, holding out his arms as Yukito stepped forward.

"How are you?" Yukito asked as the two of them thumped each other on the back in a firm embrace. Touya didn't really do hugs, but he and Eriol shared a warm handshake. Yukito was happy all over again that things had ended up this way—between one thing and another (_Ruby, _his mind supplied) there had been a very strong chance they would not all be friends. But things had worked themselves out. "What have you been up to while we've been gone?"

"I'm great, everything's great. Just got my first article published in the _Journal_, so that was huge. They decided to funnel some more grant money my way. Obviously my boss gets all the credit, but we knew that. I'm going to force my students to read my article this semester so I can really fulfill the dream of being a pretentious asshole I always had." He finished with a cheesy smile, which told Yukito right away that Eriol was feeling rather self-conscious about the whole thing, so he hugged him again.

"Congratulations, I can't wait to read it!" Yukito said sincerely, but that was all he could do right now because there was a much more pressing situation. He pushed past Eriol and headed for the kitchen. "Where's Oscar? Did you take good care of him?"

"Thrown over for a houseplant, what _is_ my life coming to?" Eriol said dramatically, but he was following Yukito. "Of course I did! You left me _two pages of notes_ and a freaking pie graph, after all."

"Oscar deserves the best," Yukito said primly as he went to the window where Oscar was hung. He might be slightly obsessive about this, _might be_, but he liked living in denial.

"It's a plant, Yukito," Eriol said dryly.

"I can't hear you, I'm talking to Oscar, and it's rude to interrupt," Yukito shot back, already stroking his hand over the riotous leaves of his Hindu Rope plant. "I'm sorry I missed your growing season this year, I promise I'll take good care of you from now on . . ."

"Eriol, thank you again for keeping an eye on this place," Touya said, clapping him on the shoulder, apparently sticking by his stated policy of ignoring Yukito's relationship with Oscar as much as possible. "We appreciate it."

Eriol shrugged. "It's not any particular hardship to check your mail and turn the lights on and off, you know. I live like a mile from here."

"Fine, then thank you for not burning it down during some wild party. Did you end up letting that student of yours stay here?"

"No, actually, that worked itself out, she was able to move in with her sister. Thanks for being cool about it, though. It was nice to know this place was a possibility if we needed it."

"Yeah, sure. It's not like we were using it."

Touya sounded so nonchalant about it, Yukito thought with amusement, like _he_ hadn't been the one who'd spent three days talking Touya into it. Eriol had mentioned over the phone that a girl in the class he was teaching was being abused by her boyfriend and didn't have anywhere to go. Yukito was the one who'd pointed out their apartment was unoccupied.

"You guys look tired," Eriol observed, then stuck his head into a cabinet and started moving pots and pans around.

"We are," Yukito said, leaning into Touya's side now that greetings had been properly exchanged with Oscar. "We are completely drained and have no plans to leave this house at all for at least a week."

"Well, I can get out of your hair, but I thought you'd want this." Eriol extricated himself from the cabinet and tossed a plastic bag to Touya.

Touya looked at the marijuana in his hands, then back at Eriol. "My man," he said with gravity. "You are, right now, this very minute, about to be venerated into sainthood. Yes. You have no idea how bad I need this."

"Consider it your welcome-home present," Eriol smirked. "Hey, I'll let you guys get settled back in, all right? Call me after your week of wild monkey sex and we'll hang out."

Eriol really knew them far too well, Yukito thought faintly, although his thoughts were mostly taken up with wild monkey sex. God, yes. It wasn't a proper homecoming until they'd re-christened every room. Every. Room. He was going to fuck his boyfriend over the washing machine in the laundry closet, _yes_.

"This is mostly a good plan, but you should stick around and help us smoke this," Touya said. "We're getting old or something, but we hardly ever smoke dope anymore. No way we'll go through all this by ourselves."

"Speak for yourself," Yukito muttered, plucking up the bag to protect it from Touya's apparent need to be a responsible adult. It was true that they rarely indulged, but their life was calling for serious indulgence today.

"What, right now?" Eriol said, startled.

"Absolutely," Touya said fervently. Yukito nodded his head in agreement.

Eriol let his concern show. "I knew you'd be tired and missing home, but you guys are making it seem like something happened. What's going on?"

"Oh, a lot of things," Yukito said glumly, digging into a rarely-used junk drawer and fishing out a handful of rolling paper. "The whole band's a mess right now."

They rolled in silence, then took it out to the tiny back porch to let the summer air absorb the smoke while they sat in crappy plastic chairs. Touya had wanted real furniture, but Yukito had argued against spending all the money when they had been headed out for a concert tour that had been extended twice after the Grammy appearance and wouldn't be around to use it. Maybe they could spruce this place up now that they were going to be here more often. He was not going to move to a new apartment right before going on a concert tour again, that was a lesson that didn't need repeating. They still had boxes to unpack, for pete's sake.

"Fai's been drinking like a fish," Touya informed Eriol, mumbling around the joint between his lips. "I love the guy, I really do, but I am _not doing this again_. If he's losing it, I'm out. I'm not going to be forced to watch my livelihood fall apart because somebody _else_ can't go a day without drinking. I already did that once, you know?"

Eriol winced but said nothing, busy holding the lighter for Yukito.

"I think being home is going to help," Yukito said, leaning back triumphantly, taking a drag and blowing it out with a satisfied sigh. "Eriol, this is why we're friends," he said blissfully, closing his eyes. He felt his face twist as his doubts reasserted themselves. "I hope it helps, but I don't know. Subaru's the only one that Fai's really close to, and he's got enough problems of his own without trying to shoulder Fai's."

"Well . . ." Eriol said slowly. "You guys have been through this before, so maybe he'd listen to—"

"No," Touya said. "No, fuck no. I am so sick of trying to hold people _together_, okay? Three years ago, Fai was perfectly fine and I don't know what the fuck's gotten into him but it's not my responsibility."

Eriol was gaping at Touya. Yukito didn't look at him at all. He'd known a bit about how Touya was feeling, but the level of anger that he could see building up in his boyfriend had him more worried than anything else. When he pulled the joint away from his lips to blow out a cloud of smoke, he could see his fingers shaking a bit.

"Touya, that's . . . not like you."

"I don't care," he said fiercely. "Haven't I been through enough? I had to watch my best friend turn into an utter asshole and watch him throw away everything he cared about because he couldn't stay out of a bottle, and then I had to watch what it took for him to crawl his way back to a normal life after—after Syaoran—oh, and _plus_, let's not _forget_, I had to watch my baby sister go through months of physical therapy and _years_ of mourning, I had to help and be there— I've had to be the strong one, all along. Didn't matter if I loved that kid like he was my own brother, didn't matter that it hurt me, it didn't matter that I lost out on some things I really wanted because Kurogane was pissing it away for me— no, I have to be the one who keeps it all together. I have to support them. I don't get a moment to just feel like fucking shit about all of it, because they need me."

Yukito stayed very quiet and kept his eyes on the concrete of the porch, willing Eriol to do the same.

"And I did, right?" Touya asked, suddenly sounding bewildered. "I tried so hard to be there for them." He sounded so unsure. Sounded alone. Small. Yukito's heart hurt for him so badly that he felt it physically, like some red throbbing in the corners of his vision. He longed to catch Touya up in his arms and hold him, but first he wanted to hear this. Touya had been gruff and distant for a while now. "I mean, I wanted to. My best friend, my little sister, obviously I wanted to . . . I . . . I _hate_ whatever's happening to Fai, I really do. He's a really good guy, he's fucking amazingly talented, we never could have done any of this without him . . . I don't know why he's acting like this. I mean, I want to help, but I can't— I don't know. I can't do this again."

Eriol pointedly tried not to see the desperate sheen of tears in Touya's eyes. There weren't a lot of people who knew the whole story, but Eriol knew more than most. He stood up, flicking his butt into the ashtray that had clearly seen use a couple of times while they'd been touring. "I'm gonna go, guys," he said quietly. _Thank you, _Yukito thought with relief, but he still stayed quiet. Eriol laid a hand on Touya's shoulder. "Get some rest. Things will look up after you'd had a chance to relax. Ruby made lasagna for you guys, by the way, it's in the fridge. We went to the store and got a few groceries this morning so you don't have to worry about food for a couple of days. Call me if you want to hang out this weekend."

"Thanks," Touya forced out, head hanging low. "Sorry, man, I just—"

"Hey, it's nice to know you're just as human as we are," Eriol said lightly. "See you."

They could hear him walk through the house, and listened for the sound of the front door closing.

"Oh, baby, I'm sorry," Yukito said immediately, scooting closer and grabbing Touya's hand tightly. "We haven't talked about this enough, and I should have—"

"Yuki, it's okay. I don't really want to do this right now."

That _hurt, _hurt like a sharp stinging blow to the face. But this was Touya, and he'd never just hurt Yukito on purpose. He knew that. So he blew out a breath of frustration and held onto his hand. "I know that this is hard on you. It's just as hard on me, and the last thing I need is to have you not talking to me."

"I wasn't . . . I'm not trying to— you know I wouldn't— look, I'm sorry. These past couple of months have just gotten really rough, and I'm tired. I don't mind talking about this, just . . . Later? Please?"

"Okay," Yukito said, lifting Touya's hand and kissing his knuckles. If Touya couldn't do this today, then there was no reason to force him. Nagging at him would just be that—nagging. They'd been through too much for Yukito not to trust him now. "Just don't shut me out, that's all I'm asking. Come on, it's too hot out here, let's go inside. Are you hungry? Ruby's lasagna is just sitting in our fridge calling our names."

Touya chuckled as Yukito pulled him to his feet. "Of course you want food. You get the munchies worse than anybody I know. I mean, did you even finish a whole joint?"

"The lasagna is _lonely_, baby, don't be mean," he pouted, glad to feel the tension lightening. Their relationship had always been so perfect that even minor challenges felt like the end of the world to him. Realizing that Touya was willing to open up again made a thousand tiny twists of worry in Yukito's stomach unravel themselves all at once. Of course he was hungry; this was the first time his stomach hadn't been upset in weeks.

"You go ahead, I don't want any."

"What _do_ you want?" Yukito asked quietly as they entered the kitchen. "If you just wanna watch t.v. all afternoon and be left alone, that's okay. Just tell me."

Touya splayed his hands on top of the small dining table beside the kitchen, leaning on them and watching Yukito walk past him. "Mmm," he hummed thoughtfully.

Yukito could feel Touya's eyes on him as he poked through the fridge to see what Eriol and Ruby had left them. Yukito had lost weight while they'd been on the road, and the jeans he was wearing were slipping low, exposing the jut of his hipbone as he used it to shut the fridge door. He hid his grin by ducking his head, knowing Touya was watching his every move, now. He bent down to grab a microwavable dish from the bottom cupboard, and exposed a slice of skin on his lower back, a dark grey design slashing down on either side of his spine and hinting at what else lay beneath his clothes. He went to the drawer for a serving spoon and idly reached his hand into his shirt to scratch at his stomach.

Touya hummed again. Yukito straightened up to look at him, and immediately stopped moving. Teasing him had worked only too well.

"You, uh, look like you might be hungry after all," he tried to joke. Then he swallowed, and Touya's eyes traced over the slight ripple of his throat. Hungry, yes, a hunger so dark and deep that Yukito just left the pasta abandoned on the counter and walked back to him. "So tell me what you want," he whispered.

Touya's hands were gliding over the surface of the table, long fingers tracing small grooves in the wood.

"You know the worst part of being on tour?" he asked, his voice thick. "I am so sick of crappy hotel rooms and parked cars and I'm tired of being _quiet_. Yuki—" One hand rose up, and grabbed the waistband of the loose jeans, yanking Yukito flush against his body. He was startled, but hardly discouraging, pressing their hips together. "I am going to fuck you over this table until one of you breaks."

Yukito's fingers dug into Touya's shoulders and his lips parted in a desperately caught breath. _Yes, yes, please baby yes_

"I am going—" he ducked his head and kissed Yukito's lips, flicking a tongue into the open space. "To make you." The other hand pressed against the small of Yukito's back, wriggling underneath the shirt and caressing his skin, and _oh yes_ he _needed_ that, needed that touch on his back so much his whole back felt like _burning_. "Scream." He bit down on Yukito's lip. Hard, so hard, Yukito wondered if he'd drawn blood—

Yukito groaned against Touya's mouth and dug his fingers into his hair, meeting his bite with a bruising kiss of his own. One tiny shimmy of his hips, and suddenly Touya's hand was the only thing holding Yukito's jeans up. He ground himself against Touya's leg.

"If it's all the same to you—" he gasped. "I'd rather move this to the bedroom. I need you to touch my wings."

"Yuki, I _can't_—" Touya said, his voice strangled.

"I _need you_," Yukito said through gritted teeth.

Touya sucked at Yukito's bottom lip, then let go of him. His jeans slumped to the floor, so he kicked them off before he could get tangled in them. During that moment of distraction, Touya bent down and lifted him, throwing Yukito over his shoulder and carrying him down the hall to their bedroom. With his stomach pressed so hard into Touya's shoulder, it was hard to breathe and not exactly comfortable.

"What are you, a caveman?" he asked in exasperation. "Ooomph!" he grunted when Touya tossed him onto the bed.

"Feeling like one," Touya growled, his hands fisted in Yukito's shirt. "This is in my way."

Yukito smiled wickedly and put his hands behind his head to allow Touya to unbutton it. But Touya was not in the mood. He grabbed the edges and _pulled._ Buttons tore away and the shirt fell open, and while Yukito could have protested his ruined shirt, he was too busy being nearly breathless with lust. His stomach was exposed to Touya, who traced two fingers from his sternum to the edge of his briefs. Yukito lifted his head to kiss him, but Touya planted a hand on his chest and shoved him back down.

"You said you needed me to touch your wings," he growled. Without warning, he flipped Yukito over to lay on his stomach, pulling him free of his shirt in the process. "I plan to do more than just touch."

Yukito splayed out his arms and laid still, heart pounding wildly with anticipation already. Touya slid one leg across Yukito's body, and carefully settled into a position straddling Yukito's hips. When the first fingertip touched the pinion of the first feather, Yukito shuddered from head to toe.

Touya set to work. If he wanted to do this right, it would take some time. The tattoo covered Yukito's entire back, the pair of wings beginning along the upper curve of his shoulders, and the last trailing feathers at the bottom were curved down his hips and licked over his rear end. When it had first been completed, Touya had been so enthralled that he'd forced Yukito to lie down on their bed and let him trace his fingers over every feather. When he'd finally allowed Yukito to get up and discovered that Yukito had come all over the sheets simply from the relentless touch on his sensitive skin, they found their favourite form of foreplay.

Touya hadn't had the time and privacy to do this for months. Even as desperate as he was to fuck, he enjoyed this just as much as Yukito did. He probably couldn't be gentle, but it seemed he planned to be thorough.

His fingers traced the coverts along Yukito's shoulders, moving in a rhythm outward, tracing just two feathers at a time. He slowly moved across his shoulders to their outer edges, where the first of the primary feathers began to appear. He paused to place a kiss on Yukito's spine where the wings joined, and Yukito groaned in contentment. He kept that up, fingers tracing further down along Yukito's ribcage and his mouth down his spine. Then he paused a moment, his breath hot on Yukito's back. The secondary feathers arced back toward the middle of his back, while the longer primaries continued lower. His tongue flicked out. Yukito moaned.

Touya used his tongue to trace along the feathers near his spine, while his fingers dug deep and slowly moved down his ribs. He nipped sharply at the place where the wings joined and Yukito rolled his hips and whimpered.

"That's enough," he gasped. "I'm ready for anything you want."

"No," Touya said firmly, and bit down a little too hard. Yukito's hands clutched at the sheets.

"Touya . . . I'm gonna . . ."

"Good," he chuckled softly, and kept going.

Fingers, teeth, tongue, lips, gliding downward all the time, little points of pain pricking throughout the deep massage into the muscles of his lower back— Hot breath damp against his spine and fingers that could fly over piano keys tracing lines over his waist— Lower and lower, all the time—

Touya met with the edge of Yukito's underwear. His hands strayed back up to Yukito's ribs, and Yukito felt Touya's hair brushing over his back as he turned his head to get the waistband in his teeth. Yukito was writhing, moaning, his erection straining underneath him and there was no way the underwear was going to come off that easily— Touya's tongue was already licking across the edge of the lowest feather, curving around his ass, fingers digging hard into Yukito's hip— he reached a hand underneath to free Yukito at last from the confines of his briefs—

"Touya!" he shrieked, and couldn't help it. He ground himself down and gasped desperately as he spilled himself onto Touya's hand.

"That's it, come for me," Touya said, raising himself up and muttering into his ear, pulling the skin of it into his mouth and nibbling at it.

"Unh," he sobbed, because he was _already coming_ and Touya was _relentless._

After he'd spent himself, he lay there bonelessly beneath Touya's weight, sweat dampening the pillow under his head and the mess under his groin beginning to get sticky. His muscles were loose and relaxed from Touya's fingers, he'd just had every inch of skin on his back worshipped, and he'd orgasmed. Time to sleep, definitely. He could shower later. He was already feeling drowsiness sucking him in . . .

Touya's fingers gripped into his hips and lifted him up. "Don't you dare," he growled. His hand slid under Yukito's neck, caressed the skin of his throat for a moment and he brought his lips down to kiss and suck fiercely at the hollow of Yukito's throat. "_It's my turn_."

[DELETED SCENE]

It was . . . An undetermined amount of time later, possibly three hours or possibly more, that Touya checked the text messages that had been trickling in.

One from Ruby: _I put some ice cream in the freezer for you, gorgeous_ (Touya shuddered and deleted it, but didn't go marching into the kitchen to throw out the ice cream, so Yukitio considered that an improvement). One from Fai: _House didn't burn down while we were gone, hooray! If I try to bother anybody about working in the studio in the next two weeks, you're allowed to murder me_, and then another from Fai: _That was Kamui and no murdering please, but I promise to leave you all alone for a while_. (They both got a laugh out of that, and it was nice to be reminded that they weren't the only ones keeping an eye on Fai.) One from Sakura: _ugggggh, Chiharu and Rika finally rented out my room, I told them to so it's fine, but now I gotta move back in with Dad for a while_ (Touya tried hard not to sound pleased by that, but Yukito thought he could have tried a little harder.)

"Oh, hey, Dad texted too," Touya said, nuzzling his face against Yukito's neck just to be a pain. Yukito whined at him. "He says we should come over and have a welcome-home dinner."

Yukito lifted his head as much as he could manage—_almost_ got his face off the pillow—and groaned miserably before collapsing again.

"I'll tell him tomorrow," Touya said, grinning.

"Tell him next month, after I get out of traction in the hospital. Tell him I'm sorry I can't attend but his son dislocated my hips."

Touya nuzzled into his neck again. "It didn't _sound_ like you were telling me to stop. I could have sworn I heard, 'yes, baby, please, please, more, so good, yes, oh oh oh it hurts oh god, no don't stop it hurts so good' . . . I think that was what you said. I mean, you were screaming it in my ear so I'm fairly sure, but I could be mistaken."

"Shut up before I kill you," Yukito muttered, hiding the flush in his cheeks by burrowing his face deeper into the pillow. Touya had just about fucked him straight through the mattress, so Yukito deserved to be left alone now. Or pampered. Touya should pick him up and carry him to the shower and feed him the ice cream in the freezer.

"Hey," Touya said, gruff and low and heartbreakingly honest, right beside his ear. "I love you, Yuki."

"I know," he sighed, turning his face so Touya could give him a small, sweet kiss. "You too, baby."

"I'm glad we're home."

"Yeah. My favourite thing is our nice big shower," he hinted.

Touya grinned and kissed his forehead. "I'll go turn it on and get the water hot." He swung himself out of bed, and nearly fell over, catching himself on the nightstand.

Yukito snickered.

"Shut up," Touya muttered. "Text Kurogane, would you? I want to make sure he got home okay."

"He's a big boy, Touya."

"Text him anyway," Touya said with exasperation. "My big-brother mode does not have an off switch. You know better. Besides, I don't want him to think he can start going weeks without talking to us again. He said yes to the tour, so he's stuck with us now."

Yukito sighed, but picked up Touya's phone. "I'm telling him this is against my will!" he hollered toward the bathroom. Tried to holler. His throat was feeling a little raw.

"Okay! Text Dad too, tell him and Sakura to come over and eat this lasagna with us tomorrow! Actually, tell Kurogane to come over, too. Don't tell him it's a family thing, you know he'll be an idiot and try not to come if he knows it's a family thing."

"Uh . . ."

"What?" Touya said, poking his head out of the bathroom.

"I think it's still on the counter. We might have to throw it away."

Touya's grin at that was _way_ too smug. "Fine. Tell them it's burgers, then."

"Kurogane's going to say he's busy."

"Tough shit for Kurogane. You and I will go pick him up and drag him back here kicking and screaming, then."

And that, Yukito thought with a grin as he typed out the message on the phone, was an accurate summary of their entire relationship.

* * *

(_twelve years ago_)

"We have a new kid," Touya said, plunking himself down beside Yukito on the grass of the football field. They were both red-faced and still gasping from the wind sprints the track coach had been putting them through.

"We do?" Yukito asked in bewilderment, looking around.

"Not on the track team. In our class. You missed it because you were on that field trip today. He just moved here. He's still only fifteen, but he's huge. I thought he got held back a grade, but I guess he's just really tall. He doesn't talk much. I didn't even talk to him at all. The girls were all over him, and he panicked and ran off to hide in the library."

"Is he cute?" Yukito asked brightly.

"Not my type," Touya grimaced.

Yukito eyed him with a lopsided smirk. "He's my type, right?"

"How would I know?" Touya said, cheeks reddening again just when he'd started to cool down. "I don't know what your type is."

Touya had invited Yukito home after school the same day they'd met, and they'd spent all their free time together in the months since. They'd both figured out only a few weeks on that the other one was _not interested_ in girls, but they'd been dancing around it. Neither of them had dated anybody before. Yukito was really, really cool and Touya hadn't really worked up the nerve to face possible rejection. He liked being friends with him too much to screw it up.

"Oh, you know, I like tall, dark, handsome men," Yukito said off-handedly. "Athletic, hopefully musical, I need a guy who I can play music with . . ."

Touya was red as a beet. "Uh, you, well, do you, when you say, I mean, do you think I, that is I think—"

"Dammit, I missed the whole thing?" a voice grumbled right over their heads.

They both tipped their heads back simultaneously. "Huh?"

"I wanted to join the track team, but the stupid librarian thought she had to train me how to use the whole system just because I couldn't find a book I needed. She wouldn't shut up, so now I missed practice."

The effect of the black-haired boy's scowl was somewhat lost when he towered so far above you that you could barely see it.

"Oh, hey, this is the new kid," Touya said, taking in a great, relieved gulp of air. "Sorry, I can't remember your name."

"It's Kurogane. Who're you?"

"Touya. I'm in your English class and your math class. This is Yukito. He was out today because he's a science nerd and they went on a field trip, but he's in those classes too."

"Oh. Hi. Nice to meet you, I guess."

"You can sit down," Touya said, drawing his legs in so Kurogane could sit facing them and they could stop looking up at him.

"Sure, I guess," he said, sinking down cross-legged into the grass.

"What kind of events do you do?" Yukito asked.

"Events?"

"For track," he clarified. "What races do you do?"

"Eh, I don't really run. I do shotput and javelin and long jump."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Touya smirked, looking at Kurogane's long legs.

"Ha ha, you're hilarious," Kurogane scowled.

"You probably get that a lot. Sorry."

"S'cool," he muttered.

"Do you play any other sports?" Yukito asked politely.

"Not really," Kurogane shrugged. "I'm not really a team player. I mostly just play guitar and stuff, but my mom— well, she wanted me to get out more, so she made me join track last year. I like it, so I wanted to try it here."

"You play guitar?" Yukito said, eyes lighting up. "Me, too!"

"Yeah?" Kurogane smiled crookedly.

Touya's heart dropped out of his chest to be consumed by his stomach. No, no, why _now_, just when things were starting to . . . ? Fuck this guy for showing up, _seriously_.

"Well, I play a little regular guitar. Mostly I'm a bass player," Yukito said off-handedly. "That's what I really like."

"That's cool," Kurogane said, his crooked smile making Touya's stomach squirm unbearably. This was the worst day of his life. Yukito looked all _interested_ and he was all _smiling_ and—

_Should have said something if you were so interested, dumbass_, Touya told himself, and gritted his teeth.

"I'm an idiot," Kurogane said abruptly, "because I'm trying to think of a way to sound less like a dork, but I just play a lot of electric guitar and I want to be in a rock band. There's no way to say that without sounding completely stupid, right? I want to be a rock star, me and every other teenager ever."

Yukito laughed, no he _giggled_, and just _ugh_.

Touya stood up abruptly. "I gotta get going. I gotta pick Sakura up from school."

Yukito stood up, too, causing Kurogane to stand up with them.

"Want me to walk with you?" Yukito said eagerly.

_Why don't you walk home with __Kurogane__?_ he thought sourly. "Nah, it's okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Oh . . . Okay," Yukito said, looking strangely hurt.

"Heh. I gotta pick up my kid brother, so I'd better get going too," Kurogane said. "You guys are pretty cool, I guess. See you?"

"Yeah," Touya muttered.

"Hey, Touya, you should tell Kurogane you play, too!" Yukito said suddenly.

"You play guitar?"

"Ah, no, just . . . I took piano lessons when I was a kid, that's all. I mess around on the keyboard a lot. It's nothing."

"He's really, really good!" Yukito threw out.

"Not really," Touya muttered.

Fifteen minutes later, Sakura was holding his hand and chattering madly at him about her day at school. She was ten, and Touya couldn't remember ever having this much to talk about when he was in the fourth grade, but he let her talk. His baby sister was basically the cutest kid ever and he didn't mind.

"And we decided we're going to be best friends!" she said brightly.

He hadn't been paying attention. Whoops. "Huh? Who is?"

Sakura made a pouting face at him. "I was just _telling_ you, Touya. The new boy, Syaoran. He's going to be my best friend, because he's really nice and we had a lot of fun in music class! That's him over there, see? That must be his big brother, he said his brother was coming to pick him up. He says Kurogane's the greatest brother in the world, but I told him _you_ were, so we decided you're probably _both_ the best—"

"Are you kidding," Touya muttered flatly, looking over at the tall boy. He had a hand on the shoulder of a small brown-haired boy, his face soft and fond as the little boy chattered at him. "Hey Kurogane!" he called out.

Kurogane saw him and sent him that sideways smile that was so _ridiculous_ and how could Yukito even _think_ that was worth smiling back . . .

"Heh. Guess we'll be seeing a lot of each other!" he called back. "Apparently they decided they're best friends!"

"Great," Touya muttered. "Whoopee."

"Next you'll be telling me your boyfriend's got a sibling in this class, too" Kurogane said, allowing Syaoran to pull him over to where _his new best friend_ was, so they could be introduced. Sakura was tugging similarly on Touya.

"My what?" Touya said, and felt his face go hot and red.

"Yukito? He's . . . your boyfriend . . .? Oh, shit, I'm sorry, I'm totally sorry, I just thought you guys were, um, I thought you guys were flirting when I was walking over, but I'm a complete _moron_, never mind, _shit_, I—"

"I haven't asked him out yet," Touya blurted out, and felt a manic smile freeze on his face.

Kurogane seemed just as frozen for a moment, but then he laughed. "You should do it soon, you know, before he gets tired of waiting and asks you instead," he grinned.

This guy . . . He wasn't so bad. Maybe.

"See you around, Kurogane."

"Yeah."

* * *

"Bad news," Fai said, grimacing as he came into the room, slipping his cell phone into his pocket.

Subaru looked up from the computer. "What is it?"

Kamui was laying on his bed, drowsing through a nap, but he muttered into his pillow and rolled over.

"Forget not going to the studio for two weeks. Kyle asked to see you and me."

Subaru's face paled. "Do we have to?"

Fai shrugged irritably. "He's a douche bag, but at least he wants our input before he makes public statements on our behalf." _Occasionally_, he added mentally.

"Don't defend him," Kamui muttered, wiping at a spot of drool on the corner of his mouth. "Kyle is nothing but a human wasteland. He is the worst public relations manager in history."

"Well, he's the one we've got. Come on, I told him we'd come in today. Putting it off will just make it worse." He'd really rather be doing anything, anything in the _world_, than having a meeting with Kyle, but if he tried to do anything else today, this would just be hanging over his head spoiling it.

"I get why he needs to talk to Subaru," Kamui said, narrowing his eyes, "but what does he need from you?"

Fai's heart ached when Subaru just bowed his head quietly. None of the things that had happened to him had been his fault, but they'd happened all the same. There were a lot of reporters trying to get answers, climbing all over each other to be the one who got to talk to Subaru about it. For all the Kyle was the world's sleaziest pile of scum, at least he was standing between the public and Subaru. It helped that the police that night had fudged a bit on their report, so the public didn't know what Kurogane and Fuuma had done. That would have been a red flag about how serious the situation was, and they would have dug more deeply into the "stalker" instead of assuming he was just a random psycho fan.

"Fai?"

"Uh, I don't really know," Fai admitted. "He probably just wants to bitch me out about that _Rolling Stone_ article. He prepped me for it and I wasn't supposed to let the guy open that whole can of worms about the lyrics."

"Really?" Kamui asked with more interest, sitting up and scrubbing his hands through his hair. "I'd have thought he'd want you to say _something_ about it, instead of leaving it all up to him."

Fai didn't really want to get into it, so he just grimaced and shrugged.

"I'll be ready soon," Subaru said quietly, going to the closet and digging amongst his many, many shoes for the pair he wanted.

"I'm coming with you guys," Kamui said.

"Ah, are you sure that's a good idea?" Fai muttered. Kamui and Kyle in the same room was _never_ a good idea, but he knew it was hopeless before the words were even out of his mouth.

"I am not letting Subaru deal with that asshole without me."

If Fai was being honest with himself, he was glad. Fai tried to act like a professional and make sure the band was taken seriously, so he usually had to keep himself in check. Kamui, being the younger and volatile member of the band, got away with a lot more. Kamui could probably call Kyle a giant fuckface without getting reprimanded by Okiura.

So the three of them set off, with Fai wondering if he ought to have informed Touya, Yukito, or Sakura about this. Well, none of them were being called on the carpet, so Fai wouldn't bother them while they were trying to settle in at home. He'd let them know if anything important happened.

They tread the familiar hallways of their recording studio, where Kyle kept his office, exchanging greetings with a few employees and stopping a moment to congratulate Hana when they saw her in the hallway. Her and Chikahito's single had debuted on the radio to a lot of positive feedback, and they were in the studio today working on the forthcoming album that would feature the single. They'd all met when Hana and Chikahito had played the opening set for a Paper Cranes concert here in Chicago at the beginning of the year. Fai thought the two of them were adorable.

The fun had to end at some point, and Fai tried to hold his head up and lead the other two into Kyle's office without making it look like they were slinking in to get punished like a trio of rowdy children. Kyle pulled a lot of weight around here because he'd worked for the studio for a long time, but he didn't technically have any authority over them and Fai wasn't planning on being bullied today.

"Hi, Kyle," he said brightly, not caring that he was interrupting a phone call. A secretary would have told them he was on the phone and held them in the outer office, but Kyle didn't have a secretary or assistant. He acted like it was because he didn't want one. He'd been in charge of public relations for the band since they'd gotten signed on two years ago, and in that time Fai had seen five different assistants come and go. The third one held the record, she'd made it a full month before quitting.

"Sit down," Kyle muttered, waving his hand in the direction of the empty chairs in front of his desk. Fai grabbed the one that belonged at the vacant assistant's desk and dragged it in.

"How've you been?" he asked brightly.

Kyle covered the mouthpiece of the phone and hissed "shut up a minute" and went back to his conversation. Subaru kicked Fai's ankle and gave him a disappointed look.

"Okay, yeah, I know," Fai muttered. If you didn't play nice with Kyle, he didn't play nice back. Nothing you could prove, nothing you could take to Okiura . . . But somehow after a concert there'd be a kid with a backstage pass asking about things they shouldn't know of.

They all sat there dully, none of them even listening to the phone conversation. They weren't the only group Kyle was in charge of, and this conversation seemed more like a personal call anyway. They were all tired and just sort of floating.

It was actually something of a surprise when Kyle suddenly started talking to them.

"Well, you may have your faults but at least you're punctual."

Now _there_ was a promising lead-off.

"Do you have any idea how hellish the last few months have been around here?"

Fai resisted the urge to laugh, and found to his horror that the urge to cry was buried closely beneath it. Best to do neither. Just give him a poker face. Come on, Fai, poker face, you have one. Yes, the last few months had been _plenty_ hellish, but he was pretty sure Kyle was talking about himself.

"Fai," Kyle said helplessly, spreading his hands out wide in supplication, "we talked about it. I don't stand in the way of your creativity, and you don't make it impossible for me to do my job."

"I'm sorry about the interview, okay? I'm sorry I didn't handle it the way we discussed. But you told me that my not saying anything was causing the situation to escalate and you were having a hard time handling it. I thought if I addressed it in a controlled environment, it would help."

"It was so sweet of you think about me," Kyle said sarcastically. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions, huh?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Fai snapped. "Hell" always made him a little jumpy, courtesy of Catholic grandparents who had been fond of telling him he was going there someday. Kamui also seemed to be bristling in his seat, although he was keeping quiet for now. Subaru was just staring at the desk with dull eyes.

"To make a long story short, you made it worse, Fai," Kyle snapped back. "I have been _drowning_ in phone calls, and every message board on the internet has a flame war with your name on it. I have slutty fan girls who are certain you are straight and are just being open minded, and that makes you even _more_ sexy. I have queer advocacy groups who are pissed off and boycotting your band because you make homosexuality seem shameful. I have a bunch of other rock bands and their fans who are trying to discredit the Cranes as musicians because they can't come right out and say how awkward they would feel if their main competitor was a huge fag. Do you get it now?"

Fai slumped in his seat, feeling like a scolded child in spite of himself. He really had opened a can of worms, whether he'd wanted to or not. Just because Kyle was a jerk didn't mean he was stupid, and he was trying to do a job that Fai had just made a lot more stressful.

"Sorry for thinking it's my own damn business," he muttered, feeling petty for saying it but unable to stop himself from saying it all the same.

Kyle laughed, because he was an asshole. "You wanted to be a rockstar, Fai. You wanted to be a celebrity. Well, now you are. And _nothing_ is your own damn business anymore."

Kamui's hair all but stood on end. "That's bullshit," he said. "I don't care how famous we get or whatever. If we can't have some kind of privacy, count me out. I quit."

Kyle actually seemed to soften a bit, looking at Subaru, who was still just staring at the top of Kyle's desk.

"Settle down," he said mildly. "Obviously I'm doing my best, and let's be honest, my best is pretty damn good. You cancelled three shows, you guys. Three shows, so Subaru could go to the court sentencing. And the public is completely convinced that it was all because Fai was down with the flu."

"Thank you," Subaru suddenly spoke up. "For everything you did for me."

Kyle was quiet for a moment. "Well, I did my best." His face went sour. "It would have helped if I'd had all the information a little sooner, you know."

Subaru finally looked up and met Kyle's eyes. "I'm sorry."

"I mean, you didn't think I should know that the guy had been stalking you for _a year_ before I started trying to make a statement about his arrest?"

Kyle hadn't been at the sentencing, had only spoken to Subaru's lawyer for maybe five minutes. He didn't even know. A year? Try five years. Five years that Subaru had been living in silent terror of the man who was finally, at last, in prison.

"I just didn't want to make trouble for anybody," Subaru whispered. "I didn't want them to have to worry about me."

"You didn't want to make trouble?" Kyle repeated incredulously. "You're not that dumb, are you? It didn't occur to you that keeping it a secret was going to make a lot more trouble than telling the truth? Or is the truth that you liked the attention? Because let's face it, if your goal was _not making trouble_ the thing to do would have been to just let him have his way and shut up about it."

Fai leapt to his feet. He was so angry and his heart was pounding so hard that he couldn't even get his words out of his throat. He choked desperately on them.

He needn't have bothered. Kamui had already launched himself over the desk.

"You _cocksucking bastard_!" he screamed, sending papers flying. The sound of his fist connecting with Kyle's cheek was a peculiar, hollow _thunk_ that was lost beneath Kyle's surprised yelp and the clatter of his chair falling over. The two of them went sprawling over the floor, with Kamui sitting right on top of Kyle and pinning him to the floor. The first punch was rapidly followed by several more. "What are you trying to say, huh?" he said hysterically. "You goddamn creep! You trying to say this was his _fault_? I will fucking shove your head so far up your ass that you'll see your own fucking lungs, you bastard!"

Fai should . . . He should really try to stop Kamui from doing this. He should. Kamui was going to seriously hurt the guy.

Subaru had rounded the desk and was tugging rather ineffectually at his brother. "Kamui, don't," he begged. He wasn't trying very hard, Fai noticed.

Kamui's knuckles were split open and so was Kyle's cheek. There was blood starting to get everywhere. Fai finally shook off his anger and shock and forced himself to walk around the desk. Kyle managed to throw up a hand in front of his face to try to ward off any more punches. Kamui snarled and bit his hand.

Kamui _bit him_.

Fai finally got his hands under Kamui's arms and dragged him away as hard as he could. Kamui was still shouting, and he struggled to get free of Fai's hold.

"Kamui, that's enough, stop," Fai said. "You're going to put him in the hospital if you don't stop."

Kamui snarled.

"_That's enough_," Fai said sternly.

Kamui stopped fighting him. He drew in a few ragged breaths, and blinked at the blood on his hands. He straightened up, pulling away from Fai, and turned to look at Subaru. Subaru was just standing there, looking down at Kyle, his face pulled tight with emotion but his eyes dry and blank. He rubbed his hand over his arm as though he were cold.

"Subaru?" Kamui asked hoarsely.

Subaru shook his head slowly.

"Come on," Kamui said gently, reaching out his torn hand. "Let's get out of here, okay?"

Subaru shuddered, then seemed to finally realize that Kamui had hurt himself in the process of hurting Kyle. He reached out his arms and hugged him.

"Are you okay?" he murmured.

"What kind of stupid question is that?" Kamui demanded. "I'm fine. You're the one— yeah, I'm fine."

"Let's go find a first aid kit," Subaru said more firmly. "I need to wash your hands and get these bandaged."

Kamui almost protested, but instead he bowed his shoulders and allowed Subaru to steer him out of the room. "You don't have to," he muttered. "I'm totally fine."

Fai let them go off on their own. They needed a couple of minutes alone, and there was still a guy laying on the floor bleeding. He offered his hand to Kyle and hauled him to his feet. He didn't try to stop his snickering. Kyle's left eye was red on its way to purple, his face was streaked with blood from his cheek and his nose, and Kamui had actually bit hard enough that his hand was swelling up and bruising.

"Well, you're a mess," Fai said cheerfully. "You should probably go clean that up."

"I'm going to urgent care," Kyle muttered, wincing and pressing his good hand to his jaw. "That kid is a rabid psycho. He assaulted me. I'm pressing charges."

He strode out of his office down the hall, and Fai followed him, snorting in derision.

"No, you aren't. You really want anybody to find out what you just said?"

Kyle glared at him, but didn't argue the point any further. He could tell that Fai was not kidding. If he tried to have Kamui arrested for assault, Fai was going to tell every fan The Paper Cranes had that their PR agent thought rape victims were asking for it. He would never find a job again.

Fai waved at Okiura as he saw the studio head striding their way. "Good afternoon, sir!"

"What the hell happened? I just saw the boys head for the bathroom looking like they had been in a— oh, for fuck's sake, Kyle," he cut himself off as he got close enough. He sounded disgusted. "What did you say this time?"

Kyle sneered. Well, he tried to sneer, but his mouth was in too much pain to pull it off. "I was just trying to make a point," he muttered.

"Yes, well, sadly the road to hell is paved with good intentions," Fai said sweetly. "Also, you're fired."

"You can't fire me, idiot."

"No, Fai, you can't. What did he say?"

Fai told him.

Okiura stared at Kyle in disbelief. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Sir, I was just trying to say—"

"Oh, shut up, Kyle. You're fired."

* * *

(_four years, eight months ago_)

"Yeah, what's up?" Kamui responded to the knock.

Fai opened the door only a crack, just in case that wasn't a "you can come in" type of "what's up." When no shrieking about being naked or busy ensued, he pushed it open a little further.

"You guys doing okay?" he inquired mildly.

"We're fine," Kamui said, sounding mystified that he'd ask. Kamui was sitting on the edge of his bed plucking at a guitar and watching a show on the crappy little 13 inch t.v. that sat atop a bookshelf they'd shoved into the corner. Subaru was on his own bed, asleep, although his guitar was leaning against the foot of the bed, suggesting that he'd been playing with Kamui earlier.

"I just wanted to make sure you were settling in okay," Fai continued, sliding fully into the room and taking in the posters they'd hung on the walls. There were a few articles of laundry scattered on the floor and a couple of books were piled beside Kamui's bed. Well, at least they seemed comfortable with their own roomm.

"Yeah, we're fine," Kamui repeated, looking confused and defensive.

"That's good." Fai smiled to soften the blow. "You're allowed to leave the bedroom, you know."

Kamui narrowed his eyes. "We know."

Subaru snuffled in his sleep and rolled over. Maybe they were being too loud. Best not to wake him, the two of them had come back to the house really late last night. Later than Fai had, and he'd closed the bar. Which was a little concerning, because there was no place these two should have been playing that would keep teenagers occupied till four in the morning. But hey, they were teenagers after all. Fai was pretty sure his mother had climbed up the walls with anxiety over some of his antics in high school.

"We don't want to bother you," Kamui added with less certainty, then ducked his head over his guitar and started playing something that apparently required concentration.

"It wouldn't bother me," Fai said carefully, "if you guys wanted to treat this more like your own house."

Fai hadn't really wanted roommates, despite how much he was struggling to pay the bills. He was just trying to cope with losing Mom while somehow getting through his final year of school. He didn't want any intrusions. But these two, they were different. They weren't just people who were helping pay the bills.

"_Sorry, just daydreaming," Doumeki said, shaking it off and returning to helping Fai search the sheet music selection for the book he wanted. But the frown lingered on his face._

"_What's going on?" Fai asked. Doumeki wasn't the type to worry unnecessarily, so obviously there was something big on his mind._

"_Ah, nothing, it's just these two kids I met yesterday," he said. "They came in for some new guitar strings and I got to talking with them."_

_Doumeki often got customers to talk about way more than they normally would with a stranger. It was something about his lack of reaction that made you feel like your problems weren't so bad. He was really accepting of other people's quirks, too. Never made you feel stupid. It was a good trait to have, working in a music store. The customers tended to be a grab bag of crazies._

"_Something about them has you worried?"_

"_Yeah. They just seemed like they needed help."_

"_Help?"_

"_They said they came here from Florida just by pointing at a map with their eyes closed. They had a place to stay for a while, but they've been sleeping out of their car the last couple of nights. They're trying to find work playing music, but they keep having to lie about their age to land gigs. They're just kids, man. Seventeen. They should still be in high school. Said they dropped out, but didn't say why. Didn't have to, really. You can tell when someone's running away from home."_

"_Siblings?"_

"_Say they're twins, actually. Don't look alike, but they're the same age, so I guess. I was just trying to think if I knew any place for them to stay. They seemed like good kids."_

_Another funny thing about Doumeki. He couldn't be that much older than Fai—somewhere in his early twenties, for sure—but he was what you'd call an old soul. Lived life at his own pace and didn't worry about the things that seemed to bother most people. He always talked about people in college or high school as kids._

"_Don't you have an extra room in your place right now?" Fai asked, remembering that Doumeki's last roommate had moved out recently. Fai shopped at Guitar World frequently enough that he and Doumeki tended to chat about these things._

"_Yeah, but . . ." Doumeki trailed off, seeming to consider whether or not he should say anything. "I might be giving the place up. My boyfriend and I have been talking about moving in together."_

"_I didn't know you had a boyfriend," Fai said in surprise._

"_Uh, it's never been a big thing, but yeah, I guess I do. I met him here. He was . . . A customer. Then he got into the training program I'm in, so we were hanging out all the time, and it just kinda . . . Well, it's an open relationship, we're pretty chill about it. But we've been thinking we might get a place together to save money. But I don't know. If we decide not to do it, I might ask these kids if they want to stay at my place."_

"_I want to meet them," Fai said, surprising himself even more than he surprised Doumeki_._ Had he seriously just said that? No, absolutely not, his life did not need any more complications right now . . . But for some reason, the thought of two teenagers running away from home and desperately trying to make it as musicians struck him. Shades of a made-for-tv movie aside, he honestly was curious about why they'd captured Doumeki's attention so quickly. That, and let's face it: the funeral bills were just sitting on top of a stack of hospital bills, and the bar did not pay him nearly enough to make a dent in it._

_He hadn't expected them, even still. The sad-eyed, soft-spoken one who walked around with his shoulders taut like he was waiting to be hurt, and the fierce one with the swagger who didn't seem to know how obvious he was. The chip on his shoulder was just his way of distracting and deflecting you from noticing that he was standing between you and his twin, in every way possible. His anger was so completely obviously a mask for pain that he had to know everyone could see it, and yet he kept fighting like he didn't know what else to do. It was heartbreaking. It was the polite, quiet twin that made Fai say yes, though. He was so strangely composed. Like he knew you would hurt him, but he wouldn't let that stop him from being kind to you anyway. It made Fai feel almost as desperate to look out for him as his brother._

Three weeks later, the twins had yet to loosen up and show any signs that they felt comfortable here. If you didn't count the guitar practice at all hours of the day and night (which didn't bother him at all, it was nice to be around other musicians again) then it was like living with a pair of polite ghosts. Occasionally he'd find traces that they'd been in the kitchen—empty takeout containers in the trash, a couple of cooking pans in the dishwasher—but they hardly ever emerged from their bedroom, preferring to simply haunt the house with music.

"Great," Kamui said after a long silence. "Thanks."

He still didn't seem to understand what Fai meant, but maybe Fai wasn't giving him enough credit. He was smiling a little when Fai closed the door and left them alone.

Writing up and signing the impromptu lease was still the longest conversation they'd had thus far. Fai had boldly asked them why they'd left school and come here. Subaru had been the one who looked like he was going to cry when Kamui answered, _"My girlfriend dumped me for another guy. I just wanted to get out of there."_ Fai remained unconvinced that Kamui had been telling the truth, but it was hardly his business.

Fai decided to make a batch of his mom's famous lingonberry scones. Maybe the way to a teenaged boy's heart really was through his stomach. And even if it didn't make them open up anymore, feeding them was good. He hadn't seen them eat much yet and he was worried that they didn't have enough money for food. He'd tried not to take their first rent payment and said he could wait until they had some money put aside, but Kamui had nearly bitten his head off, so he'd just taken the cash.

He got out all the ingredients, and suddenly realized he'd used up the last of her stash of dried lingonberries to make the scones he'd brought _her_ when she'd been in the hospital. He'd never gone out for more, because there hadn't been a reason. He poked around the pantry, hoping for some other type of dried fruit. Maybe he had some cranberries?

"Can I help with anything?"

He spooked when the soft voice came suddenly behind him, hitting his head on the pantry shelf and whirling around with his eyes smarting with tears.

Subaru skittered halfway across the kitchen. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It's fine," Fai groaned, rubbing the top of his head and checking for lumps.

"I'm sorry," Subaru whispered.

"Hey, it's totally okay. You just startled me, that's all. I'm fine." Fai smiled at him as best he could through the lingering pain. "Except that I can't find any dried cranberries. That is really my big concern right now."

Subaru brightened. "There's some in the cupboard over here." He reached into the cupboard where Mom had stored all her jars of spices, and pulled out a bag. "Oh, it's blueberries, sorry."

"That will work just fine," Fai said, reaching out to take them. "What were they doing over there? Anyway, if you want to help, that would be nice. These need to soak in some warm water to plump them up a bit, if you could get out a bowl to put them in."

Subaru nodded and found a plastic bowl, going to the sink to run the water to get it warm. "What are you making?"

"Scones."

"Are you taking them to work?"

"They're for us," Fai grinned.

"Us?"

Fai kept grinning so Subaru wouldn't see how sad Fai found it that he actually asked that. "You, me, your brother. I occasionally like to bake. It's nice to have someone living here that will eat it so it doesn't go to waste."

"Oh," Subaru said, and blushed.

They worked in near-silence for a few minutes, broken only by Fai asking for another ingredient to be passed to him from the cupboard where Subaru was standing, watching the berries slowly swelling up in the bowl of water.

"Kamui wasn't lying," Subaru said suddenly. "His girlfriend really did leave him for somebody else."

Fai grimaced in sympathy. "That really sucks."

"It isn't why we left."

"I know."

Suddenly, Subaru was backing away, eyes fearful. "How do you know?" he asked, gasping in panic.

"Oh, god, no wait, Subaru. I don't know why you left. I could just tell that Kamui getting dumped wasn't the real reason. Okay? I don't know anything. It's okay. I'm sorry."

Subaru tried to steady himself. "Oh. Right."

"Hey, it's fine," Fai said. "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"But I do want to," Subaru said, and bit his lip. "Kamui doesn't want me to tell you. He thinks we should just tell everyone it's because Kotori dumped him. But I . . . you've been really nice to us. I didn't— if anything does happen, I don't want anything to happen to you. I just want to tell you, and then if you don't want us to stay here anymore . . . That's why Kamui doesn't want me to tell you, really. He's afraid you'll kick us out, and he really likes it here."

Fai abandoned the dough he was mixing, turning around and dusting the flour from his hands. "I can't promise you what I will or won't do, because I don't know what the situation is. But I can promise you that I'll think about it before I make any kind of decision. I like having you here. Is that fair?"

Subaru nodded.

"Okay. Go ahead. I'm listening."

Subaru chewed at his lip, then finally spoke. "My biology teacher was stalking me," he said at last.

That was not even close to what Fai had been expecting. He barely managed to hang on to his resolution to be quiet and let Subaru speak.

"He was— he was really creepy. He just, he would always ask me to stay after class. He said I was really bright and he had a lot to teach me. We'd just talk about, about a lot of stuff. But he got really possessive. And he was— it wasn't appropriate. He would lock the door just to talk to me. And then he didn't want to just talk anymore. He—" Subaru's voice trembled but he was taking huge deep breaths to try to control it. "He would, you know, t-t-touch me and stuff. I didn't _want_ him to, I always asked him to stop, but he. Um. He used to threaten me. He would say he'd hurt Kamui, and he'd mess with my grades. I didn't know what to do," Subaru whispered, wiping tears from his cheeks.

"Why didn't you tell an adult?" Fai asked, dumbfounded.

"I _did_," Subaru said raggedly. "I told the vice principal and I told our parents, but they didn't listen. They thought I was lying because my grades _were_ getting worse and they thought I was making up excuses, and Seishirou was this, this _upstanding citizen and dedicated teacher_, and just nobody listened and I was _scared_, and Kamui— Kamui said we needed to go before it got any worse. So we just, we just left."

"That's when you came here?"

"Yeah. I thought . . . I don't think he'd ever try to look for me or anything. And I don't think he could find me here anyway. I just thought, in case I'm wrong, I thought you should know. I don't want you to get dragged into it if anything . . ."

Fai still had flour on his hands, but that didn't seem important right now. He crossed the kitchen and grabbed Subaru into a tight hug. Subaru squeaked in surprise, but Fai refused to let go.

"Thank you for telling me," Fai said gently. "It means a lot to me to have your trust. I know I promised to think about it, but fuck that. I don't need to think about it. You are welcome here for as long as you want to stay, and I am not even remotely worried about your sick fuck of a biology teacher. If he ever did show up here, I'd hold him down so Kamui could kick his ass. Okay?"

Subaru let out a small, choked sound, and a sudden blossoming of wet warmth on Fai's chest told him the kid had started crying. He wanted to move them into the living room and sit down on the couch, but he was afraid Subaru would retreat if he did that. So he just stood still and held on and tried not to think about the bowl of dough that was going bad on the counter. Subaru obviously needed this more than he needed scones anyway.

* * *

"I didn't do much, just dusted and vacuumed a bit. Your friends dropped off your things from the apartment yesterday, so I just put all of it in the closet so it wouldn't be too cluttered up."

"Thanks, Dad," Sakura said, still leaning against him and feeling his arm around her. She hadn't moved from his side since she'd walked through the front door, even as he'd tried and failed to talk her into eating lunch and escorted back to her old bedroom. She hadn't even moved half of her things to begin with, so she didn't need most of the stuff from the apartment right away. It could wait until tomorrow.

"Are you upset about this?" Dad asked, squeezing her shoulders.

She shook her head. "Not really. I told them to do this, since I didn't know when I'd be back."

"Still, kind of a drag to move back in with your old man, isn't it?" he chuckled.

Sakura pressed herself even closer. "I missed you, Daddy," she said simply. Maybe it was a little sad, she'd moved out two years ago and gotten an apartment with some of her old friends from high school, and coming back home when she was twenty one and _a rock star_ (yep: that was still weird to think about) was going to take some adjusting. But she could be honest with herself and admit she wouldn't find it so hard. They'd been on the road since January, and she'd barely seen Dad this entire year. This would be nice, at least for a while.

"Do you want me to leave you alone so you can rest?" he asked, sympathy in his voice.

"Mmm. Yeah. Thank you."

"Of course," he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. "If you wake up in time for dinner, I'll have the boys come over. I've missed family dinner."

"We did, too, all of us."

Dad looked hopeful at that. "Is Kurogane . . .?"

"He's a lot better. It's not like it used to be, him and Touya aren't attached at the hip again or anything, but . . . He hung out with us a lot, while we were traveling. I think he finally figured out we want him with us, even if he doesn't get up on stage."

"So he'd actually come if I told him to come over?" Dad asked eagerly.

"I think so," Sakura grinned, her own happiness tripled at seeing how happy it made Dad. "But maybe hold off and don't do it today. I know you're really excited to have us all home again, but let's wait until we all get a chance to relax."

"You can relax here," Dad pouted, but he kissed her forehead again. "I can take a hint. I'll let you nap. Did I tell you I like your hair?"

Sakura rolled her eyes. "No, but thank you."

"Love you, sweetheart," he murmured as she closed the door on him.

She just leaned on the door for a moment, gathering herself. Her hip was aching fiercely. It didn't normally, but then normally she wore special shoes unless she was onstage. Her boots looked kickass, but they existed for function: one of the soles was much thicker than the other, because one of her legs was shorter than the other. She'd been dumb and not worn them, assuming since they were sitting on the bus most of two days that she'd be fine with regular shoes. She'd been wrong.

She'd been hiding it from Dad so he wouldn't worry, but now she hobbled across the room to the bed and considered running a bath to soak some of the pain away. Instead, she flopped backward to lay down. On her way down, she grabbed the framed photograph she kept on the nightstand.

"Hey, you," she said quietly. "What do you think? You like the hair? I knew you would."

A pair of warm brown eyes twinkled out of the photo at her. She wasn't a crazy person or anything, it wasn't as though she thought Syaoran was listening. But sometimes she liked talking to him anyway. She'd gotten so used to sharing everything with him when he was here, that it was hard to break the habit after he was gone.

"I told Kurogane, sort of," she said, rolling over onto her side and setting the photo next to her head on the pillow. "I mean, I didn't exactly _tell _him, tell him. But I told him I'd been checking out one of the women from his crew. I don't know why I'm so scared to tell my dad—I mean, it's Dad—but I haven't said anything to him or Touya yet. I don't know why I thought it would be easier to start with your brother, but I did. But anyway, he was really chill about it. I feel a little better about coming out now."

Syaoran's eyes, frozen in time these past six years, still somehow seemed to be mocking her. Okay, maybe she was a bit crazy.

"I never could figure out what it was about you," she whispered. "I've tried to figure it out, because I haven't looked at a guy since. I mean, was I always supposed to like girls, and you were just that special? I don't think I would have been able to deal with it, except you were so cool about it."

"_You're my best friend, Sakura," he said earnestly, holding her hand tightly. "I love you no matter what. If you want to stay with me, I'll be the luckiest guy ever. But if you can't, then I'd still be your friend. I want you to be happy, more than anything."_

_She cried with relief, and leaned in to kiss him. "I'm happy with you, I'm always happy with you."_

"I still miss you so bad," she whispered, touching the glass with a fingertip. "You'd love all of this, the tour and the tshirts and the screaming fans. I don't get why things happened this way. I keep thinking it should be you up there with us, you and Kurogane, but if you were then we wouldn't have Fai or Kamui or Subaru, and I love those guys, I wouldn't want to lose them. I don't know why I had to lose my best friend to get all of this. It isn't fair. It's not even—Kurogane needed you, he needed you so much more than any of us needed to be in this band. I'd give it all back if it meant Kurogane could have you back. I know I can't do that and that's why this is so unfair."

She sighed, and put Syaoran's photo back on the nightstand.

"But I said I'd work hard and I'd make you proud. So I'm trying."

She closed her eyes, letting drowsiness take her.

"Hope the others are settling in okay," she mumbled before she drifted off. "We could all use a day off."

* * *

Author's Note:

You really should be visiting my Dreamwidth account for regular notes and extras about this story, including song lyrics, album cover art, and clothing designs. :D The other thing you will find at my DW account is the announcements I will be making when my COAUTHOR WHO IS AMAZING starts filling in the "deleted scenes" with, uh, MATURE CONTENT. If you would like to be part of these delightful shenanigans, my username there is farenmaddox and it's dreamwidth dot org


	4. Chapter 4

__Chapter Four

_For everything you've lost_

_And all you've overcome_

_I wanna be the one to put it in a song_

.

Kurogane didn't just go around staring at the Paper Cranes' lead singer or hang on his every word or anything. He wasn't that pathetic.

He didn't think he was.

But it was entirely possible that he paid more attention to him than he did to anyone else, he was man enough to admit that. He was not yet man enough to admit that he'd missed important cues during concerts before because he'd been too mesmerized by Fai's performance to do his job. But yeah, he knew exactly why chicks threw their panties at the guy. Offstage, he was actually on the quiet side, reserved even. Music made him into someone else. Whether it was singing in front of thousands of people in a packed amphitheatre or just screwing around with a harmonica during a rest stop on the road, something about the music made Fai seem more confident, more happy, more _him_.

Maybe he didn't like to talk about it, but Kurogane still remembered what it was like. When it was a guitar and a mic and your eyes locked on to someone in the crowd who was there to listen to _you_. He knew about hours picking out the same three chords, over and over, because creating something was a thrill even when it was tedious. Yeah, Kurogane knew what Fai felt, when he got like that.

But he didn't think it had ever made him look that fucking gorgeous.

So maybe he tended to be listening to and hearing things that weren't his business sometimes, because when Fai was speaking his ears perked up. He could admit that to himself (and once, while drowsily discussing matters of the heart with the kid, admit it to Fuuma).

So it was just a happenstance that he found out that he wasn't the only one ready to call Kamui out on his bullshit.

"Hey, don't look so sad," Fai said, slinging his arm over Subaru's shoulders. They were all helping unload equipment and sort out what belonged to the studio and what belonged to the musicians. Kurogane was in a hurry to get things packed away and get home, because he was sick of being on the road and now that he was finally back he was ready to stop working and just chill out in his apartment for a couple of days. "It's not like we're never going to see each other again. We've got to keep making a living, right?"

"Yeah," Subaru answered with one of his half-smiles that basically were patented tools to break your heart. Kurogane barely even knew the kid and still felt alarmingly protective of him. After everything that had come to light in the aftermath of arresting that fucking psycho Seishirou, even more so. "I know. I'm glad to be home, anyway, I'm not worried about that."

"So what are you worried about?" Fai asked quietly.

"Fuuma," Subaru said plainly.

Fai looked surprised, but Kurogane just felt vindication.

"What about Fuuma?"

Kurogane got busy with handing equipment out to other people so he could stay in one spot for a minute.

"I thought he'd be going home, I mean, he was in school and his family and everything . . . Did you know he's staying here?"

"Yeah, I asked him about it. He said he can't go home, actually, although he didn't say why."

Subaru looked miserable. "Because he lost his scholarship and his parents are too pissed off to let him come home. 'Just because his friends are throwing away their future doesn't mean he should . . .' I asked him about it, too. He said if he can't get back into school, and his options are making his own way in Chicago or doing it in Tampa, he'd rather stay here with the rest of us."

"Yeah?"

"I just . . . don't think Kamui knows that. I don't think he . . . I really think Kamui should have _asked_ him about this stuff. I just— he's my brother and he's great, but sometimes I just— you know?"

"Yeah," Fai said absently, patting Subaru on the head before letting go of him at last. He had noticed Kurogane's eyes on him, and turned to meet his gaze. He knew Kurogane could hear them. "You'd better grab your guitar before one of these idiots puts it with the studio equipment," he told Subaru, who went to do just that.

Kurogane totally didn't straighten up his shoulders and tighten his abs when Fai walked over, because that was so fucking high school and he was over that shit. He _totally didn't_. And he didn't run his tongue over his teeth and worry about whether or not he'd flossed lately, either. Because why would that be important, exactly? So he definitely didn't.

"What's up?" he asked gruffly, picking up an incredibly heavy piece of equipment but only because it needed moved and not to show off.

"Nothing, just thought since you and Fuuma spend so much time together maybe you'd know if he's going to be okay. Does he have a place to stay? I don't remember where he was living before we left."

"He has a place to stay," Kurogane confirmed, going for another piece of equipment. "He's staying with me."

Fai looked surprised. "Oh. _Oh_. You guys are . . .?"

"What," Kurogane grunted, and then it struck him and he almost dropped an amp. "Oh _fuck_ no. No! We are not. He's staying with me because he doesn't have a place of his own and I have a spare bedroom."

Fai's eyes clouded a bit. "Yeah, I heard. Sorry, man, that sucks."

"Nah, not really," Kurogane shrugged. How did Fai . . .? Well, as a musician he probably had shopped at the store. Maybe he'd found out straight from the horse's mouth. "We never made it that serious, we always figured we'd move on to other people. Sucks it happened while I was out of town and we couldn't really talk about it, but I'm fine with it."

He was, even though Yukito had given him those godawful sad-puppy eyes when Kurogane had said so to him and Touya. He was completely fine with his boyfriend meeting his soul mate and moving out of their place. They'd never made any promises they weren't planning to keep. Yukito could make sad-puppy eyes all day, but Kurogane wasn't exactly crying himself to sleep.

Still. He was glad Fuuma was moving in for a while. Kurogane had gotten used to someone being around.

"So. Does Kamui seriously just not give a shit?"

Fai grimaced. "I don't know?"

Kurogane snorted.

"I honestly don't. I'm as close to Kamui as anyone can be, but Fuuma is like a nuclear threat. You only bring him out in conversation if you have no choice and are prepared for a dramatic response."

Kurogane snorted again. "Fuck that," he said decisively. He marched over to Kamui, who was helping Sakura get her stuff into her brother's car. "Hey, I gotta talk to you for a second," he said, dragging the kid away from Sakura.

"Whoa, hey, overkill," Kamui squawked, writhing out of his grip. "What the fuck?"

"You're kind of a dick," Kurogane informed him. Seriously, this couldn't be much of a surprise. The kid had to know this about himself.

"What?"

"Do you know, or even care, what Fuuma plans to do with his life now? We probably won't tour again for a couple of years, you know that right?"

Kamui glared at him. "What? He's going back home, isn't he?"

Kurogane really wanted to punch this kid in the mouth sometimes. "No. He isn't. He is currently unemployed and homeless in a city he doesn't know that well."

Kamui looked uncertain, now.

"You know why that is?" Kurogane asked, raising his eyebrows.

"No?"

"It's because of you, kid."

"How is it my fault? Or my problem, for that matter?"

"Fuck, I know you're an asshole but are you that dumb on top of it? What do you mean, how is it your problem? _You_ called him up and said you needed his help. _You _invited him to move to Chicago and be part of this. _You_ did. I didn't say it's your responsibility to find him a home or job or anything like that. I just wanted to point out that he made a lot of sacrifices to be here. For _you_."

"I didn't ask him to sacrifice _anything_," Kamui snarled. "I said we were looking for a guy to run the lights, and he said sit tight he was on his way. He didn't tell me it was a problem, and I never said, 'drop everything in your life for me' so don't lay this on me. And what is your fucking point, anyway? What do you want from me?"

"I want you to make up your goddamn mind," Kurogane shouted, pissed off beyond reason now and getting in the kid's face. Fuuma was a good kid and a hard worker, and Kurogane had been looking after him for a while now. It just burned him up that this kid could mess Fuuma up so much, because he had a lot going for him otherwise. "If you want him, then fucking be man enough to admit it. And if you don't, _stop asking him for things_ and leave him the fuck alone. You _know_ what he wants, and if you're not going to give it to him then stop taking advantage of him. You might be okay with being a selfish asshole, that's your problem. But if it hurts my friends, then it's my problem. So fucking figure it out, yeah?"

Kamui wasn't even pretending to be angry anymore. He was leaning back against one of the buses, looking stricken. Kurogane lost the urge to punch him, because it made the kid look like he was twelve years old when his eyes went all big and wobbly like that.

"Get over yourself," he muttered, and went back to work.

Everyone was staring at them, although most people hadn't heard enough of the conversation or didn't know enough about the situation to put it together. Fuuma had gone inside and hadn't overheard, so Kurogane didn't really give a fuck. The rest of them could think whatever they wanted.

Although he did notice that Fai was staring at him like he'd never seen him before.

* * *

(_seven months ago_)

The show had ended and most of the band was backstage hanging out with the veeps and kids who'd gotten passes. Bottles were being passed around, eager questions were being answered, Sakura was laughing and chatting with some girl who had her pink-cheeked and hesitant—that was weird, what were they talking about—and Kamui had an arm around a woman on either side of him, grinning and letting the two of them slide their hands over his legs and press a drink to his lips.

Kurogane had come in for a second to let Touya know that he'd found the source of the problem he'd had with his keyboard tonight and he'd called ahead to their next destination and found a repair shop. He could barely stand being in the room. That was not his life anymore, he was not the kind of person who enjoyed it anymore. He could honestly say he'd never want that kind of shit back. It made his skin crawl to be in the middle of it.

He couldn't get out of there fast enough. He'd just find Fuuma and a couple of other guys and play poker or something until they were ready to hit the road.

It took a while, but he finally found Fuuma in an alley behind the building, alone and obviously upset. He was shadow-boxing and letting out sharp, angry cries with each swing. Kurogane watched quietly for a moment. Fuuma's face twisted up and suddenly he let out a yell and punched a metal dumpster. The _clong_ echoed around for a few seconds, and in the aftermath while Fuuma was clutching his hand to his stomach and groaning, he finally looked up and saw Kurogane there.

"What?" he snarled.

"Nothing, man, I was just looking for you. What's eating you?"

"Nothing," Fuuma spat out poisonously. "I'm fucking fine."

"Your hand okay?" Kurogane asked calmly.

"What do you think?" Fuuma snarled, looking down at the hand he was clutching against himself with his other hand. "I just dislocated my fucking finger, _fuck_."

"Give me your hand," Kurogane said patiently. "I'll put it back for you."

"What?" Fuuma panted.

"Just give me your hand."

Fuuma held out his hand, looking nauseated. "Are you really gonna—"

"On the count of five, okay? Take a deep breath. One, two, _five_—"

"Aaaggghhhh, fuck! Ow ow ow!"

Fuuma held his hand up to his eyes and saw that Kurogane had successfully popped his finger back into place. He blew out a deep breath and his shoulders slumped.

"Thanks."

Kurogane crossed his arms and leaned casually back against the wall of the alley, looking up at the stars he could locate through the smoky night pollution.

"Hey, man, you're allowed to have your own business, but you can talk to me."

Fuuma's eyes were wide and shining back the glare of a streetlight at the mouth of the alley. They'd worked together for a while, but they didn't get into each other's personal baggage. Fuuma looked too surprised by the offer to know what to do with it.

"Might be better to get it off your chest."

It was times like this that Kurogane wished he smoked. This was a perfect moment to light up and offer one to the kid. But there was that whole deal about smoking being really awful for you, so Kurogane didn't. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a guitar pick, flipping it around in his fingers while he waited. Old habits.

"What fucking good would that do?" Fuuma muttered, leaning against the wall face-first and using his uninjured arm to shield his face from the rough surface. "I get it off my chest, but he'll still sleep with that chick that's wrapped around him. It just fucking sucks that no matter what I do, it's no good because I'm not some— some stupid bitch with like, hair— and, and eyelashes and lipstick and fucking _tits_. What the fuck do you do with tits, anyway? Play the bongos on them? I just don't know anymore, you know? I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm such a fucking idiot. Always been an idiot. Can't help it. But this _blows_."

Kurogane had honestly assumed the back-and-forth routine with Fuuma teasing and turning everything into innuendo while Kamui snarled and bitched and yelled at him was just some sort of leftover from high school that only made sense if you'd been there. He'd never thought Fuuma was that serious about it. He treated the whole thing like it was a joke, and Kamui delivered such satisfying explosions when teased.

He kept thinking that, until Fuuma lifted his face from the wall and Kurogane saw that he was crying.

"Fuck, sorry," Fuuma muttered, wiping a shaking hand over his wet cheek. He grit his teeth and wouldn't look at Kurogane. "I'm going to the bus to crash, okay? Wake me up if you need me to do anything before we get out of here."

Kurogane couldn't exactly sympathize or say he knew what it felt like. He'd never had a thing for a straight guy, unless you counted being attracted to Fai and all his evasive bullshit. If he had to give an answer for why he hadn't let the kid walk away, hadn't just let it go and never brought it up again, he wouldn't have had a reason. He didn't know. (Every instinct he had was screaming at him that he was an older brother and this was his job but he couldn't face that. So he would have said he didn't know.)

"Hey," he said, following Fuuma around the building and back toward the vehicles. "I said you can talk to me. It's fine."

"What's to talk about?" Fuuma muttered.

"Whatever, man. Maybe talking won't help, but maybe it will. You don't know if you don't try."

"What do you want to know?"

They entered the equipment trailer and starting checking stuff in to make sure it was all accounted for, without saying a word about it. They'd gotten good at working together. Someone else had probably done this already, but it was easier to talk sometimes when you were doing something else.

"Tell me, uh, tell me how you guys met."

"Don't fucking laugh at me for this."

"I won't."

"It was fate."

"Not laughing. Go on."

"There wasn't any reason for the two of us to ever talk to each other, you know? I was a year older than him and played basketball, and if there's one group of kids we didn't talk to, it was the drama geeks. I didn't even know the kid existed. But then my sister tried out for a play and got the part, and got all excited, and _then_ she comes home one day and tells me she's going out with the lead actor. And that was my baby sister, you know? So I wanted to make sure this guy she was seeing was okay. I—"

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Kamui was going out with _your sister_?"

"You said you wouldn't laugh."

"I lied," Kurogane whimpered past the laughter in his chest, actually trying to hold back because Fuuma was upset and all. "I just— It's like an episode on that godawful high school soap opera show that Syaoran and Sakura used to watch when they were like, thirteen."

"Right," Fuuma said bitterly, kicking a discarded soda can out of the back of the trailer and watching it skitter across the blacktop, flashing back a dizzy pattern of reflected light. "Must have been that episode about not judging a book by its cover, right? Maybe the good-looking jock who plays basketball and gets all the ladies is secretly a queer, and maybe the gorgeous kid in the drama department is somehow the straight one. And maybe this guy's sister is a total bitch and cheats on her boyfriend and dumps him for a hippie, and if this was television, he'd have fallen into my arms at the end and I'd have told him how sorry I was that my sister sucks but he'd have it better with me anyway and we'd walk off into the sunset holding hands."

"Dude. She cheated on him?"

"Not like, _cheated_ cheated—I mean, she'd fucking better not have, I'm already pissed at her enough—but yeah, there was this college kid who was studying theatre and was getting credit by volunteering at our school. Kakyo. He was a total psycho, all into dream interpretation and shit. Kotori got this huge ego because she was the starring actress, and Kakyo fed her all this bullshit about how far she could go and how talented she was, and she fell all over herself for him. Dumped Kamui so she could spend even more time getting told how talented she was by that assclown. And he didn't deserve it, okay? He'd been really good to her. And I had wanted to keep an eye on them because I'm the protective type of older brother, so I joined the stupid drama club. I learned how to do the light and effects for the stage, and I ended up really liking it, I kept doing it at the university . . . But yeah, I was hanging around all the time, so I got a front-row seat for all of this. I got to watch him get shut out by the drama department because they idolized Kakyo and they didn't want Kotori on their bad side. It was . . . really shitty for him. He'd been really popular with them and suddenly they turned on him. Kinda shitty for me, too, because there wasn't anything I could do."

"I take it he didn't fall into your arms, then."

"Do you fucking see him in my arms?" Fuuma muttered. "No. There was. There was this other thing going on back then. I can't really tell you about it. It was this thing with Subaru—that part of the plan worked out splendidly, by the way, we got to be friends really easily and I thought I had this great _in_ with Kamui because his brother liked me—but yeah. So I can't talk about it but some things happened. I'd already graduated, I was playing basketball for University of Tampa, but I knew about it. And that's when they left."

"Left?"

"Dropped out of their senior year. Skipped town. Moved to Chicago."

"Oh," Kurogane said. Maybe he should try harder to be in the loop or something, because he'd had no idea about that.

"Long story short, I never got over him. So when he called and said he was in a band and their main tech could use a hand until they got a record deal, I . . . I don't know what I thought was gonna happen. I just didn't want to stay there making nice with my sister and playing ball when I could be in Chicago with him. You know?"

He didn't know, not really. He'd never felt like that about somebody, that somebody might be worth all that. But that didn't really matter that much right now. "Yeah. Not gonna lie, you're in a pretty shitty situation. I doubt there's anything I can do to make it any better for you, but I'll keep an eye out."

"Naw, don't worry about it. About me. I'm fine. Thanks, though."

"No problem."

"Seriously. Thank you. For just, you know, letting me talk. I . . . kinda feel better. I guess."

"Good," Kurogane said, slinging an arm over his shoulders and leading him out of the stuffy trailer that always smelled like motor oil and weed. "Now come on, let's go round up a couple of guys for poker. We're going to be here for a while."

* * *

"Aw, come on, seriously," Fuuma muttered, nervously jigging up and down while he shuffled toward the counter, his phone plastered to his ear. "Just pick up already."

The man working the register was smiling pleasantly and seemed to be enjoying himself despite the line being six people deep and growing. The girl calling out orders at the pickup counter seemed harassed and was barking out specifications like they disgusted her.

"Pick up or you're getting plain old boring ass coffee, boss," he told his phone as he hung up. _DUDE I JUST NEED TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF COFFEE YOU DRINK_ he texted.

Fuuma was being a complete tool by not just ordering the aforementioned boring ass coffee, because he knew Kurogane drank it black all the time. But they'd also been on Starbucks runs before in which Kurogane ordered . . . Something. Maybe it was sad that Fuuma had known the guy for almost three years and still didn't know how he liked his coffee, but why would he be paying attention to stuff like that? Now it was coming back to bite him, because he wanted to do _something_ to say thank you and this was about all he could do at the moment.

The person in line behind him had his hands in his pockets, gazing out the window, seeming to be in no hurry. Still, as Fuuma started dialing again, he waved his hand at the guy to gesture him to move forward.

"Go ahead, I'm still trying to figure out my order," he said, indicating his phone. "He's just being an ass, I know he's not busy. Come on, Kurogane, seriously."

The guy smirked the slightest bit as he took the invitation to cut in line, like he thought something was funny.

"Why do people even have phones if they're not going to answer them, right?" Fuuma sighed, giving up and putting his phone away. "What's so funny?" he asked the guy, who was still smirking.

"Nothing. I know somebody named Kurogane, and he never answers his phone either."

Fuuma snorted. "How many antisocial grumpasses named Kurogane can there be? We're probably talking about the same guy." Which wouldn't be that weird, he was at a coffee shop right around the corner from the apartment. It was possible that someone who knew him also frequented this shop.

"Big guy, lots of tats, doesn't talk much?"

"That's the one. Hey, that's funny, what are the chances?"

They were at the counter and the cheerfully crowd-controlling guy was raising his eyebrows to politely interrupt.

"Morning, Adam," the guy drawled, hands still in his pockets. "Usual two caramel machiattos, for one thing. You got a dark roast brewing? Yeah? You got almond milk? Okay. Au lait, dark roast with almond milk. And whatever this dude is having," he added, waving a hand at Fuuma.

Disconcerted, Fuuma took a step back. Maybe the guy knew Kurogane, but Fuuma knew better than to trust people just because they seemed legit. "Uh, no, that's, that's fine, dude no offense but I don't know you—"

"You're a friend of Kurogane's," the guy said patiently, "so it's cool. What are you having?"

Fuuma sheepishly ordered himself a mocha, and tried very hard to pay but was lazily rebuffed. Once the transaction was complete and they'd stepped to the side, Fuuma frowned.

"Uh, thanks, but what the hell. I mean, for one thing, you just paid for my coffee and I don't know you, and for another thing, _almond milk_? _Kurogane _drinks that?"

"He's lactose intolerant," the guy said patiently, a smirk still quietly lingering in the corners of his mouth. "Regular milk makes him yak. When you pick it up, stir some cinnamon in there, by the way, he likes cinnamon."

Fuuma was fairly speechless at this point. Who the hell was this guy?

"As for paying, consider it my way of wishing you good luck. If you're going out with Kurogane, you'll need it."

"What," Fuuma muttered. "With . . . Huh?"

The remains of that smirk said it all.

"_Oh not a chance in fucking hell_," Fuuma said fervently. "Me and Kurogane going _out_ would be . . . Who _are_ you?"

"His ex," the guy grinned. "Hey, when did he get back?"

"Yesterday."

The door blew open and admitted a slender man with pale skin and electrifying eyes, who made a beeline straight for them. Fuuma instinctively took a step back.

"Please tell me you have my coffee," he moaned. "I need caffeine so very, very much."

"It's coming, hold your horses," the guy said, then grabbed one slender hand and pulled the man forward to peck him on the lips.

"Good morning to you, too," the blue-eyed one spluttered, face going pink as he looked over at Fuuma, who was still standing there rather befuddled by it all.

"So anyway. I'm Doumeki, this is my boyfriend Watanuki, and you are . . . _not_ Kurogane's boyfriend?"

Fuuma was not really sure his mind could contain both the reality of Kurogane's ex-boyfriend buying him coffee and the implication that he himself was dating the boss. That was too much weirdness all at the same time.

"I'm Fuuma," he finally said.

Doumeki just nodded. "Yeah, he told me about you, I figured you were Fuuma. I just figured that after being on the road together that long you two were probably banging each other."

"Oh my god, you are _disgusting_," Watanuki hissed, digging fingers into Doumeki's arm, who didn't even flinch.

Fuuma finally kicked his brain into gear enough to find this funny, because it totally was. "Well, banging isn't the same as dating, you know. There's the occasional friendly bj but— _Anyway_. The two of us both have our sights set elsewhere, so no. Wow. You're the ex. Huh. He mentioned he had a boyfriend a couple of times, but you're really not what I imagined."

Doumeki just gave him a rather serene look. He was still holding the other guy's hand, like it wasn't totally awkward to be talking about your previous boyfriend's sex life in front of the current boyfriend. He didn't seem bothered by the possibility that Kurogane was dating someone else, either. Maybe Fuuma had been expecting something else, but he could see the appeal of dating someone this confident and chilled out.

"So, yeah, thanks. Dark owlet or whatever it's called, and no regular milk. I'll try to remember that. I better get this back to him before it gets cold."

"You're staying at the apartment?"

"Yeah, for now," Fuuma shrugged. "I was staying with these other guys when I first got to Chicago, but they're not around anymore, so Kurogane said I could stay with him for a while."

"That's good," Doumeki said thoughtfully.

"It is?"

"That somebody's going to be there," Doumeki said, and there was a frown building up between his eyebrows that hadn't reached his mouth yet. His new boyfriend was running a hand up his arm with one of those caring expressions that you only saw on people who were dating. "Hey, let's go to the apartment."

"Right now?" Watanuki said incredulously.

"Yeah," Doumeki answered calmly. "I wanted to introduce you guys, and I need to talk to him. Might as well—unless you guys were planning on friendly bjs this morning," he added with a sudden grin at Fuuma.

_Yes yes there is someone else with my sense of humour after all, oh god I love this guy_

"Aw, it can wait, we've got all day," Fuuma grinned back. "Sure, I guess. It's just around the corner at— oh, duh, you know that, I'm an idiot, I moved into your room. Anyway. See you guys there in a minute."

"I have to be at work in an hour," Watanuki scolded him as they went out to their cars.

"You don't have to come."

"See, there's love, there's trust, and then there's leaving you alone with a guy you're not actually over."

"I could tell you that you have nothing to worry about, but you'll worry anyway."

"Weird as this seems, we only met six months ago and I don't know you that well yet. Oh god, six months and we've already moved in together and you quit your second job for me. You are the greatest mistake of my life. What am I doing here? My life makes no sense. I am soooo not leaving you alone with your ex."

"Kid'll be there," Doumeki said, gesturing at Fuuma with his coffee cup.

"I am an excellent chaperone," Fuuma said, raising his fist in victory. "I am the reigning champion of cockblocking. The king. I have years of experience. I am an Olympic medalist in cockblocking."

Watanuki just gaped at both of them for a minute. "I am coming with you. At this point, just to see if maybe Kurogane is a sane and rational person. I might leave the two of you alone together and run away with him."

Doumeki's response was growl, then push the guy up against his car and kiss him rather passionately, so Fuuma grimaced and ducked into Kurogane's car and hurried to get back to the apartment to warn him of impending visitors. Which he could have _done_ already if the guy would just answer his—

His phone rang. "Oh, _now_ you feel like answering your phone."

"Don't order me any of those fancy bullshit drinks with all the sugar in them," Kurogane ordered. "Just get me an au lait, but not regular milk, it—"

"It makes you yak," Fuuma said over him. "I know. I even put cinnamon in it."

Kurogane was quiet for a minute as he put the pieces together. "Fuck me, what was Doumeki doing there?"

"Getting coffee, obviously. The better question is what he's going to do when he gets to the apartment."

"He's coming over?"

"On his way right now, with the new guy. Well, if they can peel themselves off each other long enough to get in the car, anyway. Doumeki says he wants to introduce you guys."

Kurogane sighed heavily. "Great."

"Sorry."

"S'fine. I should probably put on some pants."

"Probably," Fuuma grinned. "I'm here, I just pulled in, so crack the door open for me. My hands are gonna be full of coffee."

"Yeah, got it. Pants, pants, ugh, we gotta have a major laundry day here."

"Hanging up now, boss."

Fuuma had barely handed the coffee over to Kurogane—who had managed to locate something semi-clean—before there was a knock on the half-open door.

"Hey," Kurogane called out. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and seemed like he didn't give a fuck about anything when Doumeki and Watanuki walked in. Fuuma knew better. He was flipping a guitar pick around between his fingers. He never did that when he _actually_ didn't give a fuck.

"This is fine," Doumeki said, and flicked the little cardboard sleeve of his coffee cup with such pinpoint accuracy that he knocked the guitar pick out of Kurogane's hand. "Don't get all nervous on me. Kurogane, this is Watanuki."

"Yeah, hi, this isn't terribly awkward at all, it's nice to meet you," Watanuki said, shaking hands with him. "Oh my god, you're huge, please do not hit me."

"It's not that awkward," Kurogane said, actually seeming to relax for some reason. "I mean, unless you want it to be or something. I'm glad to meet you. See for myself what turned this guy into a sappy grinning moron. He practically uses full sentences when he talks about you, it's crazy."

Doumeki didn't change expression in the slightest, but his cheeks got a little flushed. "Yeah, well, you notice he's gorgeous." He shrugged. "Couldn't help myself."

"And I . . . have lost my mind," Watanuki sighed. "I have no idea what I see in this guy."

Kurogane raised his eyebrows. "You don't?"

"Just look at him," Watanuki said dramatically, gesturing at the man in question, who was standing there looking faintly amused. "He's rude and lazy and terrible at communication, and he has a terrible sense of humour and he leaves his disgusting dirty socks all over the house—"

"Tch. I know."

"So clearly I have lost my mind."

That made Kurogane scowl at him. "You could always just give him back if you don't want him."

Fuuma was just being casually observant, making no noise and trying to will himself into nonexistence, wondering if he should have left the room, at least . . . Now he wondered if he should probably stay in case somebody started throwing punches. Because Kurogane looked _pissed_, and Watanuki was going _beet red_ and Doumeki . . .

Oh. Ouch. He just looked like somebody had punched him already.

"I— I am really sorry," Watanuki said, covering his mouth with one hand, his eyes starting to well up with tears as he looked at Kurogane. "It wasn't— I wasn't trying to— Guitar World is my first management job, and I've been really stressed out and nervous, and Doumeki was really helpful, and we just started talking all the time and . . . I never meant for things to happen like they did. I wasn't trying to take him away from anybody. I, I know I'm not— special," he said bitterly, looking down at the floor. "You must be so angry, because I'm not _anything_ special, and I don't know why—"

Doumeki stepped forward and put a hand on the small of Watanuki's back to steady him. "Don't do that," he said softly, pressing a kiss into his hair. "Kurogane. I know we talked on the phone, but I had something to say in person. Let's go out on the balcony for a second."

Kurogane just nodded and led the way, leaving Watanuki and Fuuma in the kitchen trying not to look at each other and trying to pretend this was not the most miserable morning they'd ever had. Fuuma suddenly remembered that he was holding coffee, which was getting lukewarm and gross. Watanuki's was sitting on the counter.

"Um. Do you want to stick your coffee in the microwave for a second? Mine could use a re-heat."

"Yes, please," Watanuki muttered, his face flushed red with humiliation.

"So this might sound condescending and useless, but I kind of know what it's like," Fuuma said cheerfully as he started rounding up cups of half-finished coffee. At this point, laughing about it was the best way to deal with it. "I've been in love with someone for years, and I met him when he started dating my little sister."

Watanuki let out a soft, disbelieving laugh, not really looking at him.

"I mean, I didn't get as lucky as you did because he won't have anything to do with me, but the point is: I know how fucking awkward it is to feel like you're the one who doesn't belong in the picture."

"Well, that's encouraging," Watanuki muttered.

"No, I don't mean you actually are! I think it's going to be fine. Me and Kurogane talk a lot, and I know he's actually genuinely happy for you guys. He acts like he's a jerk, but secretly he's kind of nice. So I don't think you've got a lot to worry about."

They both glanced out toward the balcony, just in time to see Doumeki wrap his arms around Kurogane. The shocking thing for Fuuma was not that Doumeki had the balls to do that where Watanuki could see him, but that Kurogane leaned into the other man's embrace. In the stunned silence, they managed to catch Doumeki's muted words.

"I didn't mean to fall in love before you did. I'm sorry. I don't want to leave you if you're not okay."

"This was always gonna happen someday. And I am okay," Kurogane responded, pulling out of his arms and straightening up. "Totally fine." He slid open the balcony door and gestured for Doumeki to come back inside ahead of him. "I'm better, at least. Fujitaka wants me to come over for dinner tonight, and believe it or not I think I'm going to," he added as he came in behind Doumeki and shut the door again. "And stop gaping like dying fish," he said to Fuuma and Watanuki, walking right up to Watanuki, who flinched. "Hey, man, I'm happy for you guys. We're cool. Okay?" He was holding out his hand.

"I, um, are you sure?"

"Very sure."

Watanuki shook his hand.

"Yay, everybody's friends, that's so nice," Fuuma said in a chipper voice. "And now your coffee is hot again, so best day ever!" He handed them out. "And don't worry about Kurogane falling in love, anyway, he's got the hots for—"

"Shut the fuck up," Kurogane said, smacking him on the back of the head.

"I would never name any names, but he's blond and pretty and famous," Fuuma crowed, running across the room to avoid getting hit again.

Doumeki was giving Kurogane a look of serious concern. "Dude. I thought that was like, a one-time thing. And you guys were really high. I didn't know you—"

"Whoa, what?" Fuuma said in shock. "You and Fai have already hooked up? And you were high?"

"You're talking about _Fai_?" Doumeki said, and suddenly started laughing.

"Yeah, dude, who did you think I was . . . Kurogane?"

The guy looked like he was on the verge of a heart attack, his face nearly purple and his hands twitching with the need to strangle someone to death. "_Nobody_," he said viciously. "We are not talking about anybody at all, and so help me, Doumeki, if you ever bring that shit up again I will—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you'll fucking kill me," Doumeki smirked, waving a hand dismissively. "Anyway, he and I gotta get going, or we'll both end up being late for work. When are you coming back, Kurogane? It's been busy, we could use you."

"Ah, I've got to call the boss," Kurogane said. "Next week, probably. Might bring this one with me to start talking about going through the training program."

"You might?" Fuuma said, startled when he realized Kurogane's jabbing thumb was directed at him.

"Why not? You got some other work lined up?"

"No," Fuuma admitted. "I guess being an electrician's better than flipping burgers or something. Sure."

"Cool," Doumeki responded. "See you guys at work, then."

Watanuki could be heard to say, as the two of them went out the door, "Have I mentioned that my life makes _no sense_?"

Yeah, wonder what that would feel like, Fuuma thought sardonically as he drained the last of his mocha and wondered if it was acceptable to nap right after coffee. Laundry didn't seem that urgent.

* * *

(_five years ago_)

"So not as hard as it looks, right?" Michelle said cheerfully, having just finished showing him how to change the color filter on a spotlight. "It's nice to have an extra pair of hands, though, really. It was just going to be me and Jo running the whole thing, and we would have been so fucked."

Fuuma wasn't looking at the light, he was looking much farther down. He and Michelle were currently standing on the scaffolding behind the wall of the set, playing with a bank of lights that had already been mounted. Fuuma had joined the crew rather late in the game, and most stuff was already built and put into place. They had dress rehearsal in a few days.

"Yeah," he said belatedly. "Glad to be here."

The actors had already finished rehearsals for the day, so Kamui was sitting on the edge of the stage with his guitar in his lap, strumming chords and humming while Kotori leaned against him. He'd occasionally lean over to peck her on the cheek, but he was too focused on his guitar to carry on a conversation, so she seemed happy just to lean against him and listen.

Yeah. Sounded good to him, too. He'd showed up here two days ago ostensibly to join the stage crew and with the private purpose of keeping an eye on Kotori. She'd never had a boyfriend before, so as a big brother he was understandably concerned. He'd thought the guys on the team would stay off his back, since it was only going to be for three weeks and it wasn't like he was sewing the costumes or anything.

It was just that he kept forgetting who he was supposed to be keeping an eye on.

"—_fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. May I be converted and see with these eyes. I cannot tell; I think not: I will not be sworn—"_

"_Less angry, more introspective, Kamui!" shouted the drama teacher._

_The boy turned around quickly, flicking his head to swing messy hair out of his eyes. "I'm angry because you're making me do Shakespeare," he said, his voice clearly carrying to the back of the room, where Fuuma and Kotori had just walked in. "This is high school, there are four people who are going to be able to follow the dialogue. Why aren't we doing __Picasso at the Lapin Agile__?"_

"_Somebody got a bug up their ass, I don't really know," the drama teacher said, voice weary and dragging. They'd had this conversation before, obviously. "If you don't want to play Benedick, I can find someone else."_

_The boy on stage smirked at that, his meaning obvious: _I'd like to see you try_. Fuuma's jaw fell loose and his eyes flicked down to make sure the swooping feeling in his stomach hadn't had any unfortunate effects on him, because holy shit. Kamui was. Wow. Fuuma tried to will his heart to get back to his regularly scheduled beating._

"_Just keep going, Kamui, we've got a lot to cover today."_

"_From the top?"_

"_No, just pick up where you left off, that's fine."_

"_Right," he sighed, and straightened his shoulders. "I will not be sworn, but love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool. One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace."_

_Kamui glanced to the back of the room and winked. Fuuma's eyes widened and his heart resumed its effort to beat out of his chest. He was winking at—_

_Kotori giggled and blew Kamui a kiss. Right. Fuck. Obviously. She was standing right next to him and Kamui was winking at his girlfriend. Oh god his baby sister. Was dating this guy. Stop it, Fuuma, just stop staring, just look away._

"_Rich she shall be, that's certain," Kamui went on, and finished his dialogue. Monologue. What the hell had Kotori said it was? Whatever it was, Fuuma wasn't even listening to it. There in jeans and a tshirt on a half-built stage with a script that most of his audience wasn't going to be able to follow due to the archaic language . . . Somehow he still looked poised, unselfconscious. He had fucking memorized Shakespeare, and he made it sound good, how was that possible?_

_He kept telling himself to stop watching and go introduce himself to the stage crew. But he couldn't tear his eyes away._

"Hey, Kamui!" someone shouted from across the room, causing the boy in question, his girlfriend, and the boy on the scaffolding all to look in their direction. "If you're gonna bring your guitar, quit it with that romantic crap and play something good, huh?"

Kamui's grin was sly and fierce. He nudged Kotori off his shoulder to give himself more room to work, and then he started playing. Ten feet above his head, Fuuma chuckled. It was good music alright, although he doubted whoever was shouting had a clue what it was. And Kamui was playing the _shit_ out of it. He tried to lean over the edge of the wall to get a better look at Kamui's flying fingers.

He'd been such a good big brother and gone to all of Kotori's piano recitals when they were kids. She used to play this.

"What the fuck is that?" the asshole asked.

_Für Elise . . . Really fast, but it's Für Elise and he's amazing_

"Für Elise, fuckwad," Kamui hollered back. "It's Beethoven, not that that probably helps you, moron!"

Kotori giggled and hopped down from the stage to run over to the piano and play with him. Fuuma watched the two of them laughing at each other as she tried to keep up with him, and kind of wished he'd slip off the scaffolding and bash his brains on the floor. This was torture.

"_I will hide me in the arbour!" Kamui finished, and immediately bounded off stage, heading to meet Kotori, who was already skipping forward to meet him. "Why, 'tis the fair Beatrice!" he grinned, dropping a light kiss on her._

_Kotori giggled and cuddled against him. "Kamui, this is my brother Fuuma. Fuuma, isn't Kamui amazing?"_

"_Aw, come on, Tori . . ."_

_Okay, now he was blushing and that just wasn't _fair.

"Come on, Fuuma, I want to show you where we keep the extra filters. I still have to show you how to use the programming equipment, too."

Fuuma followed Michelle down and tried to tell himself that he only had to get through another two weeks of this. In two weeks, the play would be over and he could start pretending that he didn't know who this guy was that Kotori kept talking about. Coming here had to be the biggest mistake of his life.

"_Yeah," Fuuma said softly, hanging back as they headed to the front and Kamui gave Kotori a hand onto the stage so they could run lines together. "He's . . . perfect."_

* * *

After shuffling at his laundry before simply rearranging his shoes, reading a single paragraph on the community college's home page before finding himself migrating to Pinterest, and scribbling down only three progressive notes for a song he was trying to write . . . Subaru finally gave up on doing anything productive today. He was hungry, anyway.

The kitchen held no better luck for him. For one thing, the only food they'd left behind while they toured was dry food like pasta or rice, or canned like soup or tuna. It all sounded disgusting. He wanted Mediterranean food. He'd kill somebody for baba ghanoush and lentils right now. He shut the pantry door and sighed uselessly.

Then he flopped down on the couch in the living room. Screw it. He was watching crappy t.v. for the rest of the day. His first day home had been upset by Kurogane shoving his brother up against a wall and yelling at him, and his second day home had been ruined by fucking _Kyle_. His third day was just being ruined by tedium.

The front door burst open to admit someone—it could be Fai but by the noise was probably Subaru's errant twin, who'd disappeared a while ago.

"Hi," Subaru said, then frowned. "What were you doing?"

Kamui was red-faced and dripping with sweat. "Running," he gasped.

"Well, god, go cool down and stretch out."

"Already did," he said, bent in half and bracing his hands on his thighs. "Over at the park down the road. Jogged the rest of the way."

"Oh," Subaru said, flipping through a few channels and trying to determine how much he cared if Kamui judged him for watching "Law and Order."

"So you think I'm a selfish asshole for not falling in love with that childish moron, too, right?"

Startled, it took Subaru a minute to switch gears. "Uh," he said, attempting to buy himself a moment.

Kamui had pulled his shirt off and was wiping his face and neck with it, and he was glaring at Subaru like he planned to set him on fire in a minute. "Everyone seems to think I'm just being a jerk by not falling all over myself for Fuuma, despite the fact that he acts like a second-grader and the fact that _I am not and never have been interested in men_. So how come you haven't told me you think I'm an asshole? I'm your brother, you're supposed to tell me these things."

Subaru sighed, but he didn't try to get out of the conversation. He'd been waiting for Kamui to bring it up. He'd expected something more subtle, but he shouldn't have, really. Kamui's defense mode was angry and accusing, even when it didn't need to be, even with him. Subaru was just lucky because Kamui defused a lot quicker with him.

"Sit down," he said mildly.

"No," Kamui snapped. "I don't want to have some kind of heart to heart chat about this. I'm too pissed off. I'm gonna shower."

Subaru sighed again and went back to watching t.v. until Kamui emerged half an hour later in jeans and a tank top, his damp hair curling along his neck. He threw himself down in a chair and glared at Subaru, who muted the television.

"You're mad at me because of what happened yesterday with Kyle."

"Even _Fai_ was angry and you know he never gets mad! You were just going to stand there and let that sack of crap say— say things to you—" he choked off.

Subaru folded his hands quietly between his knees. "I know I've got problems. And I know that I should get more upset when people treat me badly. But unlike you two, I was willing to see if Kyle would clarify what he meant. Not that I'm not happy you kicked his ass," he grinned suddenly, "because I am."

The thwacking noise of Kamui's fist on Kyle's face was entirely too pleasant to remember. Subaru abhorred violence, and somehow this did not bother him at all.

"Good."

"Kamui?"

"Yeah, what."

"I think I might try going to therapy for a while."

"Hunh?"

"I just . . . think I need some help. I've never been very good at thinking well of myself, and I know the lengths I go to, to keep people happy and stay out of their way, I know my boundaries are a little, um."

"Fucked up?"

"Yeah."

"That's Mom and Dad's fault," Kamui said, clenching his fists. "They— they didn't—"

"Have a clue what to do with me?" Subaru finished for him, with a helpless smile.

Their parents could take responsibility for a lot of their problems. His dad had been one of those parents who thought his job was done when he brought home the paycheck for their care. He wasn't exactly the type of dad who got down on the floor to play with their toys or to open his study door for chats. Their mom—oh boy. She was a different story. Controlling and unreasonable and legitimately terrifying to all of the other mothers of the PTA bunch. She had very definite ideas about what her child should do, assuming that child was Kamui. She'd been baffled by Subaru from the first. He was too sweet and too quiet and too submissive, and he made no sense to her. So she'd pretty much ignored him. Like, his entire life. Living in her house did not necessarily mean speaking to her every day.

With Kamui, it was different. He was exactly the sort of kid she'd wanted, and she'd planned out his entire life by the time he was three. He was supposed to do something amazing, although she hadn't seemed to care whether the magazine cover he ended up on was _Forbes_ or _Entertainment Weekly_. He was her pride and joy and he was going to marry the prettiest girl in the world and give her ten fat happy grandbabies.

Don't question that plan.

Ever.

Subaru beckoned at Kamui until he got up from his seat and came over to join him on the sofa, looking puzzled and amused. "What?"

"We need to talk about something, and you're probably not going to like it. But please, Kamui, please try to listen to me and not get upset."

Kamui raised an eyebrow to point out what a good beginning that was. Subaru chewed at his lip, then decided to hell with it, because they were adults now and they were on their own and they were allowed to just be _happy_ for once, not let anything hang over their heads and fuck it all up anymore, not Mom or Seishirou or anything else.

"I want to talk about what you were like when you were a kid."

Kamui crossed his arms over his chest and leaned away from him. "Why?"

"I just . . . think it's important."

"Fuck. Fine."

The look leveled at him said: _do your worst_. Subaru wasn't sure Kamui would even be able to hear what he was saying when he was this defensive.

"I don't think I'm the only one who might need a little help right now, to try to figure myself out a little better."

"And what the fuck does that mean, exactly?"

"Kamui," Subaru said softly, trying not to look and sound as wounded as he felt because he wasn't trying to emotionally manipulate him or anything. Apparently he wasn't a good actor, because Kamui shifted uncomfortably and lowered his eyes. "You know I love you more than anything. You're my little brother."

Subaru was seven minutes older. This had been important more often than he cared to admit.

"I know that."

"So don't treat this like I'm attacking you, please. I just want to help you."

"And this means I have to go to therapy and talk about how dumb I was as a kid?"

"It means that you need to start being more honest with yourself, however you can manage to do it," Subaru said as firmly as he could. "You are . . . You're not what I hoped you'd grow up to be."

Kamui crossed his arms even more tightly and hunched over. "So fucking sorry to disappoint. What were you hoping for?" he muttered.

"I hoped you'd be happy," Subaru whispered, and then he had to stop and wipe at his eyes before the tears could start falling. "You're _not_, and the worst part is that you think you are."

"I am," Kamui protested, eyes on the floor. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Subaru bit his lip and worried it between his teeth. "You don't even remember how badly Mom treated you, do you?"

"She didn't treat me _badly_, where are you getting that from?" he said, sitting back up and glaring at him. "She was hard on me, but so what? A lot of mothers do that, and it wasn't like I wasn't up for it. I'm an overachiever!"

"Do you remember the first time we watched 'Aladdin,' that Disney movie, when we were little?"

"I guess."

"So you remember saying that you wished you were Princess Jasmine so that Aladdin would take you on carpet rides and you could marry him, because you thought he was handsome?"

"I did _not_!" Kamui snapped.

Subaru found himself sighing again. This was the hardest conversation he could ever imagine having in his life, harder even than getting grilled by the police about Seishirou. If there was anything that could ever come between him and Kamui, it would probably be this.

_Please please please do not fuck this up_

"Yeah, you did. And then when they made us draw a picture in class of what we wanted to be when we grew up, I cut pictures out of magazines and made myself the world's most stylish professor. _You_ drew a picture of yourself wearing a dress. You said you wanted to get married and be a wife."

"What the— Subaru, seriously? I did not. I have zero recollection of doing that."

"I kept it," Subaru muttered, and wiped at his eyes again. "You got in trouble and they called Mom and Dad in for a conference. I kept thinking I'd show it to you later to remind you what you really wanted, after they got finished telling you that you couldn't have it. But it . . . There never seemed like a good time to give it back to you. And I had to leave it behind when we left, because it was boxed up in the garage."

They had taken what they could cram into the extremely shitty car that Fuuma had helped them procure. The stuff in the garage had been left behind so that Mom wouldn't catch them out there and ask them what they were doing. They didn't want anyone to try to stop them, so they had kept their leaving a secret until the minute they walked out the door. Mom had been home. Subaru would have thought you'd have to shoot three rounds into her gut to put that expression on her face, watching the last seventeen years of her life walk out the door with a middle finger raised high.

"_If you're not going to lift a fucking finger to help your kid, then I guess it's up to me," Kamui snarled. "I'm not waiting for my brother to get raped before I start listening. Fuck all of you."_

Subaru had sort of hoped that getting away from Mom would help. Seemed that the damage had been too traumatic for that.

"Kamui, you were so much happier before that. Our babysitter was teaching you how to sew, and the two of you would make cupcakes because you got such a kick out of decorating them . . . And everything was fine until the bullies at school started getting to you."

Subaru had been a lot more clever about hiding it. There was a girl in their class who'd invite him over all the time and it was only there that the fashion magazines and giggling over cute boys came out. Kamui wasn't good about hiding it. He'd been too obliviously happy about his Strawberry Shortcake notebook and the crocheted scarf he was working on during breaks.

"I know that nobody beat you up, but they were just not, you know, friendly. They . . . "

"Tripped me," Kamui said in a dull voice. "Stole my stuff and spit in my food and one kid threw a rock at me during recess once. I remember that."

"That's when the teacher had a conference with Mom and Dad."

"Yeah."

"And that's when Mom banned Disney from our house and grounded you from all t.v. for a month, and she signed you up for karate and guitar lessons. You always tell everyone we did everything together, even guitar lessons . . . But you were just teaching your lessons to me at first, until Mom decided if I was going to learn I should learn from a professional. Remember?"

"Yeah, of course. I mean, I didn't forget any of this stuff. I just never thought it had anything to do with, you know, that."

"You knew," Subaru said gently. "You—you started acting different. You said you didn't like our babysitter anymore and made Mom get us a different one. You started trying to like the same things those kids who bullied you did."

"So what, Subaru? I mean, really, so fucking what? I was kind of girly when we were kids and then I learned how to kick people in the face and stop doing shit that made Mom worry that I was gender-confused. Moral of the story, you have to grow the fuck up sometime."

Subaru kind of wanted to fly to Tampa right now. So he could punch Dad in the face. Not Mom, she was beyond reasoning with. But Dad was the one who just sat there and let her do whatever she wanted and let her make Kamui into whatever she wanted and maybe Subaru didn't really _care_ that he personally got ignored, but if they'd ever gave a fuck about him then things would have been more balanced and Kamui would have felt more free to just screw up sometimes. And maybe Dad could have stopped her from doing this. From making Kamui think that all this was just part of growing up. Dad could have said something, if he'd wanted to. Dad could have said the one thing Subaru always wanted to say, tried to say: _leave him alone_.

Nobody ever listened to Subaru. Nobody but his twin.

"Kamui . . ." He took a deep breath. "You're allowed to do whatever you want, _be_ whatever you want. _That's _what growing up is, just accepting yourself for who you are and making a life for yourself instead of running away from it. I don't care if Mom hates it. I don't care about Mom at all. If what you always wanted was to be somebody's wife and crochet for a hobby, then _do it_. Why should you care if people call you a girl? What do you care about what anybody thinks?"

"I don't," he snapped. His face started to crumple, so he drew his knees up, hugging his legs and hiding his face. "I don't care, right? I never— but come on, just because I was stupid when I was a little kid doesn't mean I still want— are you trying to say that you think I _am_ gay?"

"I didn't say that," Subaru said gently, and then the misery in Kamui's posture was too much, so he scooted forward and put his arms around Kamui's shoulders, resting his head in the crook of Kamui's neck. "I just want you to learn how to separate what Mom said you _should_ want, from what you actually want. I think it's the stupidest idea in the world that you have to be gay or straight or male or female just to like things and have hobbies. It's not fair and it's pathetic. I don't let anybody tell me what I'm allowed to do or like just because I like dick. So fuck them. I don't want you to have to worry about what kind of label they're going to slap on it. I just want you to do what makes you happy."

"I don't really . . . I mean, you notice we're getting kind of famous?" Kamui muttered, grinding his forehead against his knees. "I don't really get that option."

"Then quit," Subaru said brutally. "I'll quit, too, I don't care. I mean, I do, but this is more important to me. _You_ are more important to me."

"I don't want to quit."

"Good, because you don't need to. Like this would be the first time a rock star did something weird?" Subaru teased. "You could play a show totally in drag and I doubt anybody would bat an eye at this point."

"Yes they would."

"They'd get over it."

"I don't want to dress in drag, Subaru."

"Okay. Do you have the first clue what you want?"

"No," he choked.

Subaru tightened his embrace. "That's fine. We'll figure it out. Okay? Can we try to do that?"

Kamui sighed shakily. "I liked trying to pretend I don't remember anything before we moved to Chicago. I would be _fine_ with that. I kinda hate you right now."

"I'm sorry," Subaru said. "Actually, I'm not. If it means you wind up happier, then I'm okay if you hate me."

Kamui shifted himself free of Subaru's arms. "You wouldn't be okay with that at all, you idiot," he mumbled, and turned to give Subaru an embrace in return. "I'll think about it."

"Okay!"

"Don't sound so damn happy!" he scolded. "I said I'd think about it, not that I'd do it!"

"Thinking is good," Subaru grinned. "I'm okay with thinking."

"And don't think this means— means _anything_," he snarled. "About Fuuma. Because I might go on some fucking journey of self-discovery and find out that I always wanted to be a pretty, pretty princess and maybe I'll start sewing myself dresses, who the fuck knows, maybe I'll even decide I really am bisexual or something . . . But at the end of the day, Fuuma is still an asshole. And I still hate him."

Subaru probably shouldn't push it this far. He did it anyway. After all, he hadn't been the one who'd thought of Fuuma or brought him up. "Nobody ever said you had to fall in love with the guy, Kamui. But he has been an amazing friend, to both of us, and he deserves your gratitude. If he wasn't _him_ then you'd acknowledge it. But he's a man, who's in love with you, and that's a huge threat to who you got told you were _supposed to be, _so you treat him horribly. He scares you."

"I am not _scared_ of that _moron!"_

"Good. Then you won't be afraid to thank him for keeping an eye on Seishirou for us, and for moving to Chicago to help the band get started, and for how hard he's worked the last couple of years to make us successful, and—"

"Okay, I get it, I get it. What do you want me to do, help him find a job? I don't even have one of those."

"You could be his friend," Subaru said softly. "I think the poor bastard could live forever if you'd just smile at him for once."

"Hah. That would just encourage him."

"You really think he needs the encouragement?" Subaru asked wryly. "Come on, that's enough horrible emotional talk for one day. I'm exhausted. Let's go grocery shopping and make dinner. I'm hungry."

"Fine."

"We'll see if they sell aprons. You should have a pink apron with hearts all over—"

"Fuck you!" Kamui screeched, chasing him down the hallway. Subaru ran, laughing, and felt like something was shifting, like somehow they were being set free. They'd both been haunted by shadows long enough.


End file.
